


A little friendly competition

by stillflying



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-19
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2019-09-22 13:47:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17060933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stillflying/pseuds/stillflying
Summary: "Gob Bluth wasn’t academic, and he wasn’t particularly good at sports, but the annual talent show... that was where he excelled."  Dumb gay magicians in love - high school edition.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have another fic I ought to be working on but I can’t stop thinking about blunder so I wrote this instead.

For the majority of the year, school was not Gob Bluth’s favourite place to be.  For a start, he had to attend classes, and what did he need with classes when a) his family was super wealthy, and b) he was going to become a famous magician.  There weren’t any classes for that.  And sure, he was popular, but that was a lot of work in itself.  It wasn’t enough to be his naturally charming self – he had to pretend to care about sports, he had to get the most girls out of all his friends (and most of them weren’t even that hot), and he had to make sure he avoided having a stuttering breakdown in front of anybody important, because that would be social suicide.  But the build-up to spring break made the rest of school bearable, and not just because the build-up to spring break meant that it was nearly spring break.  It also meant the school’s annual talent show.  Gob Bluth wasn’t academic, and he wasn’t particularly good at sports, but the annual talent show... _that_ was where he excelled.  Well, he accidentally set fire to the curtains last year.  And the year before that, the dove he let loose ended up nesting in the rafters.  But, other than these two minor incidents, he excelled.  Plus, he was the only student who ever performed a magic act, so he deserved points for that.

Unfortunately, now that the talent show committee had explicitly banned any fire or dove related performances, Gob’s two areas of expertise were out of the window and he was struggling to come up with a new idea.  This was his final year, and he really wanted to go out with a bang.  (Not literally, though.  He was pretty sure the fire ban also included explosives.)  Auditions were to be held during lunch breaks over the course of the week, which at least gave Gob some time to think things through.  While he was mulling over ideas for his performance, he’d decided to sit at the back of the theatre and watch the first set of auditions, just to see what he was up against.  However, several acts in, he was already barely concentrating.  It was the same every year: singers, dancers, kids who thought being able to do a cartwheel was a talent...  That’s why Gob was unique, that’s why he was the most talented performer involved in this show, that’s why – wait, who the hell just appeared on stage in a puff of smoke?

Gob immediately sat upright in his chair, craning his neck to get a better look at whoever had suddenly appeared on stage, and cursing himself for zoning out when the committee had called out this guy’s name.  From what Gob could see, though he couldn’t see much from so far back in the theatre, this guy was pale, with dark hair, and dressed entirely in black.  Gob was pretty sure he didn’t recognise him, which meant he wasn’t one of the usual performers who’d decided to copy Gob’s magic angle, but presumably a new student who was unaware that there was already a magician at this school.  Gob watched as a girl (announced as the assistant) wheeled in a cabinet, and the magician explained that he was going to make his assistant disappear.  This was a classic trick, and Gob knew how it worked, but he found himself almost on the edge of his seat as the assistant got into the closet and the door was shut behind her.  There was something so exciting about watching live magic, especially when the magician had so much charisma.  He was walking around the cabinet, reeling off some story about its ancient magical properties in a hushed, dramatic tone, and Gob couldn’t help but be impressed at the showmanship.  After a minute or so, the magician opened the cabinet door, and the assistant was gone.  Gob had been expecting the committee to react with disgruntled mutters at the sight of another magician, judging by how they tended to react to Gob.  However, they were applauding him enthusiastically, which Gob thought was a bit premature considering he hadn’t even reappeared the assistant yet.  Not that he was jealous of their reaction or anything, but for all the committee knew, the girl was gone for good.  Of course, after some more patter, the cabinet door was closed and then reopened, and the girl was back, prompting yet more applause.  Gob folded his arms.  If he’d known they’d react that way to a simple cabinet illusion, he would have tried it years ago.  If only his parents had given him the money for that damn Aztec Tomb.

With the performance over, the magician and his assistant were pushing the cabinet off stage again.  Immediately, Gob was out of his seat and rushing backstage.  He had decided that he needed to find out who this guy was.  Mostly so he could assert his dominance as the school magician, and make sure this newcomer didn’t get ahead of himself.  After all, he may have the committee on board, and he may have an assistant, and he may be cool and dramatic and be able to appear in a puff of smoke, but Gob was here first, and that had to count for something.  He was easy to spot backstage, at least, being the only person out of all the auditionees (and, indeed, in all of California) dressed entirely in black.  Gob was a little taken aback seeing him up close.  He was shorter than Gob had expected, especially for someone who seemed to have so much stage presence – and was he wearing makeup?  Eyeliner or something.  Whatever it was, Gob decided he needed to work on his branding if he wanted to look anywhere near as striking.

Gob sauntered over to him casually, trying to act like he hadn’t practically ran backstage to be sure he caught him.  “Hey, I saw your illusion just now,” he said, in as nonchalant a tone as he could muster.

“Oh, thanks, man,” the magician responded, although Gob hadn’t actually complimented him.  He _would_ have complimented him – it was a great performance, really – but Gob was hardly going to stand here and butter up the competition.

Instead, he said “I don’t think I’ve seen you before.”

“I’m new here,” he said, holding out his hand.  “Tony Wonder.”

Gob resisted the urge to tell him what a cool name that was, and shook his hand.  “Gob Bluth,” he said.

Recognition dawned on Tony’s face.  “You’re the other magician,” he said.  “The committee told me about you – you’re the reason we can’t use doves.”

“Good, you’ve heard of me,” Gob said, seeing an opportunity to ensure that Tony learned his place.  “Because, you know, I do an illusion every year at the talent show.  It’s kind of my thing.”

“That’s so cool – there weren’t any other magicians at my old school,” Tony said, seemingly oblivious to Gob’s attempts to assert himself.   He lowered his voice a little, as if sharing a secret, as he asked “is it true you nearly burned the theatre down last year?”

“Only the curtains,” Gob said defensively.  He didn’t like that the talent show committee was clearly painting him as some idiot who set fire to theatres and wasn’t able to recapture doves.  “And that would have been a great show if those curtains hadn’t been so flammable.”

Tony laughed, which was weird because Gob hadn’t been joking.  “So, what have you got up your sleeve this year?” he asked.  A layman would perceive this as genuine interest, but Gob knew that Tony was only trying to level the playing field by finding out what Gob’s performance was going to involve.

Gob decided to keep it deliberately vague.  “Something incredible,” he said, partly because he wanted to sound cool and mysterious, and partly because he had nothing.

Tony grinned.  “Well, I look forward to seeing it.  Every performer needs a little friendly competition,” he said, nudging Gob on the shoulder.  He looked like he was about to say something else, when his assistant called him over from across the room.  He nodded in her direction to show he’d heard her, and then quickly turned back to Gob.  “Sorry, I’ve gotta run.  I’ll catch you later, Gob.”  And then he was gone.

Their interaction left Gob feeling a certain kind of way for the rest of the day.  No matter how hard he tried to concentrate on what he was going to do for his magic show, his thoughts kept coming back to Tony Wonder.  He decided that this was because of their obvious rivalry.  Tony was so smug, grinning away and talking about friendly competition as if he didn’t perceive Gob as a threat at all.  Well, Gob would show him.  He’d wipe that smile off his face on the night of the talent show, with the greatest illusion this school had ever seen.

Now he just needed to come up with one.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do we want? Gob and Lindsay sibling interactions! Where do we want them? In canon preferably but fic will have to do! I meant to update this a lot sooner but it turns out Christmas is a busy time, who knew? Happy holidays, everyone.

Coming up with an illusion to beat Tony’s was proving somewhat difficult. Really, most illusions were better with two. How Tony, who was barely established at this school, had managed to find someone willing to be his assistant was a mystery to Gob. Gob didn’t know a single other person in the school who was interested in magic. Sure, sometimes girls liked it when he did coin tricks, or produced bouquets of flowers out of thin air, but that’s only because they wanted to sleep with him. Which was great and everything, and Gob certainly wasn’t beyond using magic as a pick-up tool, but it’s not like any of these girls would be interested enough to become his assistant.

Some clarity was afforded when he spotted Tony in the cafeteria the next day, with a group of friends Gob recognised as being theatre kids. Gob had never willingly spent time with a group of theatre kids (and if they were as annoying as Michael was when he did that dumb Captain Hook play, then he didn’t want to) but he supposed they might be more interested in magic than the people Gob spent his time with. This also explained why the talent show committee had been so receptive of Tony: it was made up of theatre people, and Gob guessed they took care of their own. He briefly considered trying to worm his way into their crowd, but decided it wasn’t worth the potential backlash – his friends put up with his magic, but he didn’t know what they’d say if he went full theatre kid, and he had a reputation to uphold. As he was considering all of this, he figured he must have been staring at their table, because he suddenly caught Tony’s eye. Tony gave a small wave in greeting, and Gob immediately turned away and rushed off to where his own friends were sitting. He didn’t want to give Tony the impression that he wanted to befriend him, after all.

The table his friends were sitting at was already very crowded, and he wound up sitting next to a girl he thought he’d hooked up with at a party one time, Eve something or other. He wondered if she might be interested in being his assistant. He prepared to switch on the charm and ask her, but as soon as it became clear that he was going to speak to her, she stood up and pointedly moved her seat to the other end of the table. What had he done? He was pretty sure he hadn’t spoken to her since that party, so he had no idea what could have happened between then and now to make her react like that. Girls were so weird. Maybe he should ask a guy to be his assistant. Even as that thought came to mind, he knew it was a bad idea. Looking around the table at his options, he knew that none of these guys would agree to it, and a solid 70% would openly mock him for asking. The issue with being as popular as Gob was that his friends weren’t really his friends. This seemed to be the one manner in which he took after his parents. Friendships were allegiances, ways to get yourself ahead in the world. And if that meant not having an assistant for your magical illusion performance at the school’s annual talent show, then it was a worthy sacrifice. It still kind of sucked, though.

After school, Gob holed up in his room and did some brainstorming. If he couldn’t use a human assistant, maybe he could use an animal. Sure, his dove act had turned out less than perfect, but there were plenty of other animals he could use that wouldn’t fly away and nest in the rafters. He was trying to figure out whether an act involving mice would be clearly visible from stage, when his train of thought was interrupted by Lindsay entering his room. “Gob, can you drive me somewhere?”

Being the only Bluth sibling who could drive was both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it gave him an easy advantage over his siblings. On the other hand, he was expected to cart Michael and Lindsay everywhere, since his parents certainly weren’t going to do it. “Where?” he asked, wondering what favour he could get her to owe him in return.

“Ancient Chinese Secret. It’s this eastern medicine store my friend told me about.” Sensing that Gob wasn’t interested, she quickly added “if you take me, I’ll get you something too.”

Gob wasn’t sure how high one could get from eastern medicines, but he was willing to find out. “Fine,” he said. “As long as we can stop by the pet store on the way there. I need to pick up some mice.”

***

“Why do you need mice?” Lindsay asked. She was looking at the back seat of the car, where a newly purchased box full of mice was now precariously sitting.

“For the talent show,” Gob said, as though this was obvious.

“What, are you gonna make them do tricks?” Lindsay asked.

Gob turned to look at her as if she was insane. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to train mice, Lindsay? No, I’m just gonna make them appear and disappear and stuff.” He shrugged. “I haven’t really planned it all out yet, but it’s gonna be great. Much better than what Tony Wonder’s gonna do.”

“Who’s Tony Wonder?” Lindsay said.

“Well, exactly,” Gob said. “Nobody’s ever heard of him. And they’re never going to hear of him, because my magic show’s gonna blow his magic show out of the water.”

“So he’s another magician,” Lindsay nodded. “Maybe you should become friends. Then you’d be able to talk about all this stuff with someone who actually cares.”

“I don’t want to be friends with Tony Wonder,” Gob said, aghast at the very idea. “He’s my rival. I’m going to totally show him up.”

“With mice.”

“It’s a work in progress, Lindsay.”

After a brief car ride, wherein Lindsay took the opportunity to make an impassioned speech about animal cruelty, and Gob argued that giving mice the chance to perform on stage in their brief lives was anything but cruel, they pulled up outside Ancient Chinese Secret. Gob decided to follow Lindsay into the store and inspect the goods, since she’d promised to get him something too, and if he didn’t choose what he wanted personally, she’d probably buy him the cheapest thing there. At least, that’s what he would do. It seemed to sell the perfect products if you wanted to get completely whacked out, which was one thing Gob and Lindsay had in common. He glanced over the products Lindsay was picking up to see if any of them looked particularly appealing, but he didn’t need anything to help him lose weight – nor did she, but that was beside the point – and the last thing he could afford to do right now was take anything that would relax him to the point that he lost focus on preparing for his magic show. He wondered if any of these drugs helped increase brain activity. He could certainly do with something like that.

“Should I get something for Michael?” Lindsay mused as she looked through the shelves of herbal remedies. “He could probably use something to stop him from being so stressed all the time.”

Gob scoffed. What did Michael have to be stressed about? It’s not like he had to come up with the perfect illusion by Friday. Glancing around the store, Gob was seconds away from asking an employee if they had anything that would enlarge mice, when something behind the counter caught his eye.

“What’s that?” he asked the cashier, pointing to it.

“That’s the Sword of Destiny – it’s full of ancient magic,” the cashier blatantly lied.

“Magic, huh?” Gob asked. “How much is it going for?”

In fact, the sword was not for sale, was there entirely for decoration, and cost around $20, but the cashier knew an oblivious rich kid when he saw one. “$200. It’s hundreds of years old, it-”

“Hey, Linds,” Gob interrupted, now that she had made her way over to purchase her items. “Buy me that,” he said, pointing to the sword.

“No way, it’s too expensive.”

“So? You’re only using mom’s credit card,” Gob pointed out. What, did she think he wouldn’t recognise it? He was the poster child for stealing his parents’ credit cards.

Lindsay gritted her teeth. “Don’t tell her,” she muttered, and then turned to the cashier, dumping her items at the counter. “We’ll take the sword too.”

Gob grinned. Now this was progress.

***

Bursting through the front door and into the lounge, Gob announced “screw the mice, I’ve got a new angle!” to anyone who may have been there – in this case, it happened to be Michael, who was reading on the couch. Gob walked over to him, proudly brandishing his new purchase, which was really Lindsay’s new purchase, which was really their mother’s new purchase. “This is the Sword of Destiny.”

Michael, it seemed, was a couple of steps behind. “Screw what mice? What are we talking about?”

“Oh, I bought some mice,” Gob said casually, and then realised he’d left them in the car. “Don’t know what I’m going to do with them now. Do you need any mice?”

“Funnily enough, I don’t. What’s with the sword?”

“I’m going to use it as part of my illusion at the talent show.”

“Right. And what are you planning to do with it?”

“I don’t know yet.” He paused for thought. “Would you let me saw you in half?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Come on, Mike,” Gob whined, “Tony Wonder has an assistant; it’s only fair that I do.”

“Who’s Tony Wonder?”

Gob had no idea why Michael was the supposed perfect son when he was so clueless about absolutely everything. “He’s my _rival_ , Michael, keep up.”

“Oh, you have a rival now? You do realise it’s a talent _show_ , not a talent competition?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Gob said. “Tony needs to know who the real magician at this school is – which he’ll learn when he sees me take this sword and... Do something cool with it.”

“Alright. Well, good luck with that, Gob,” Michael said, standing from the couch and making his way to his room, which was his way of indicating he was tired of this conversation. “And be careful with that sword, you’ll take someone’s eye out.”

Of course Michael wouldn’t understand. He wasn’t a magician. Tony would understand. In fact, it was kind of a shame they were rivals, because Gob was willing to bet that Tony would think the sword was pretty damn cool. But he had been led to the sword for a reason, and that reason wasn’t to impress Tony, it was to humiliate Tony by proving that he was the superior magician. With that in mind, for the second time that day, Gob went into his room to plan his performance. While this would probably come as a surprise to most of his teachers, when Gob set his mind to something – particularly if that thing was incredibly petty – he was willing to work surprisingly hard to achieve it. And now that he had the Sword of Destiny on his side, it was a whole lot easier to come up with a plan. The illusion would be simple enough to perform. He just needed to take the sword, cut a few things up to prove it was real, and then switch it out for a fake and pretend to impale himself. Yet again, this would work better with an assistant, but Michael was obstinate, and pretending to stab mice with a fake sword was harder than it looked, so Gob was on his own.

By Friday, Gob had practiced enough that he was confident and ready to audition. He drove himself and his siblings to school early that morning with the fake sword and other assorted props in a bag on the front seat next to him, and the Sword of Destiny lying across the laps of a somewhat concerned Michael and Lindsay in the back seat. As soon as they arrived, Gob headed straight for the theatre to write down his name on the list of today’s auditionees, and leave his props backstage. He would have preferred to keep the sword with him the whole day for safekeeping, but Michael had pointed out that this was probably illegal (or at the very least, against school rules) so he decided the theatre was the safest place for it.

The rest of the morning went by in a blur. Gob felt nervous but excited, as he always did when he was about to perform. That did mean that he couldn’t stop feverishly bouncing his leg during his classes, which garnered responses from teachers ranging from irritation to anger. Normally, he wouldn’t care what they thought, but the comparisons to Michael (who, he was informed, always sat still and concentrated in class) were starting to get to him. Why couldn’t people understand that they just had different strengths? Michael was able to sit still in class, and Gob was able to fake-impale himself on a sword while The Final Countdown played. Gob knew which one _he_ considered a more valuable skill. Besides, it’s not like Lindsay did much more than slack off either, so Gob was hardly the most disappointing sibling out of the three. And fuck knows what Buster was going to turn out like. So, really, Gob should be given some credit for having any skills at all.

He was musing over all of this as he finally escaped from his last class before lunch, and was making a beeline for the theatre, when he was startled by a voice saying “hey, Gob”.

Tony Wonder had appeared in front of him out of nowhere. Then again, it’s possible Gob had just zoned out and hadn’t seen him coming. He did that sometimes.

“Tony!” Gob exclaimed, glad to see a fellow magician after being berated all morning. It felt like interacting with someone on his side for once, though of course they were on opposite sides, so he tried to stop himself from smiling too much. How was he supposed to convey to Tony that he didn’t like him if he sounded excited to speak to him? “How, uh, how’re you doing?” he asked, lowering his voice and aiming for a casual tone.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Tony said. “Look, I was wondering, are you still planning on auditioning for the talent show?”

“I’m heading there right now,” Gob said. Tony, for some reason, looked weirdly disappointed. _Probably thought I’d chickened out after seeing his audition_ , Gob thought. _Well, I’ll show him_. “Wanna come and watch?”

This seemed to brighten Tony up a little. Gob couldn’t understand why none of his attempts to assert his dominance seemed to work around this guy. “Yeah, sure thing,” he said, “I’ll just grab my things and I’ll see you there.”

Tony made off to his locker, and Gob headed onwards to the theatre feeling a lot more upbeat than he had felt a minute ago. He initially hadn’t planned on letting Tony see his audition, mostly because he wanted the satisfaction of showing him up on the night of the talent show. However, he reasoned, maybe if he outshone Tony during the audition process, Tony would realise what he was up against and back out gracefully, allowing Gob to remain the only magician in the line-up. That, and Gob actually kind liked the idea of another magician watching his audition, since he knew the talent show committee wouldn’t be able to appreciate it for what it was.

He arrived at the theatre to find that there weren’t many others auditioning today, as backstage was practically deserted. He supposed it was quite late in the game. At least this meant he wouldn’t have long to wait, and wouldn’t have to sit through too many excruciating performances of freshmen who thought they could sing. Sure enough, after around ten minutes, Gob’s name was called (in a somewhat exasperated tone) and he made his way to the stage, Sword of Destiny in one hand, bag of props in the other. The committee was sitting in the front row as usual, made up of the same members of the theatre department it always was, and Gob spotted Tony sitting a few rows back. Seeing him made Gob wish he’d also made a dramatic entrance onto the stage, like Tony had with his cloud of smoke, just to impress him a little. Not that he needed to impress him. Just upstage him. And, cloud of smoke or no cloud of smoke, Gob’s illusion was going to upstage Tony’s. He drew the sword from its scabbard, held it aloft, and announced “this is the Sword of Destiny! It’s hundreds of years old, and it’s full of ancient magic.” He was about to launch into his rehearsed speech about a curse placed on the sword, when-

“Gob, stop,” one of the committee curtly insisted.

Gob paused. He’d barely gotten started yet, what were they doing interrupting him? He wondered if Tony had used his theatre kid connections and asked them to deliberately throw him off. Maybe that’s the real reason he agreed to come and watch.

“Is that a real sword?” the committee member asked.

“Of course it’s a real sword,” Gob said, blustering. “What, you think I’m gonna impale myself on a fake sword or something? That’s ridiculous.”

The committee muttered amongst themselves for a second, and then one of them spoke. “Gob, we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

“...What?”

“First the dove, then the fire – now you bring a weapon? Someone could end up getting seriously hurt during one of your performances. I’m afraid we can’t allow you to participate in the talent show this year.”

“Th-that’s crazy,” Gob argued, “nobody’s going to get hurt, I’m the only one on stage. And – and I know what I’m doing.” He could feel himself getting flustered, but he couldn’t help it. This wasn’t supposed to happen. He’d worked so hard, he’d planned the perfect illusion, everything was meant to be going right for once. “Come on, just let me show you-”

“Gob, that’s enough. We’re going to have to ask you to leave. And please take the sword off school property before we have to get the principal involved.”

Gob knew it was a lost cause. He stormed off the stage before he ended up having a full on breakdown in front of everyone, taking the sword with him but forgetting his bag of props in the process. He still had half the school day left, but he couldn’t stay there any longer, so decided to follow their request to take the sword off school property. He drove all the way home with it, tears of frustration building in the back of his eyes the whole time. _This wasn’t supposed to happen._ When he entered the house, he expected to be scolded by his mother for skipping school, but luckily she wasn’t home. Probably at the club, or however else she spent her time. And of course his father was at work, or having an affair with one of his secretaries, or however he spent his time. Gob had the house to himself. He went straight to his room and locked himself in. He threw a handful of food at the mice he had bought the other day, which he hadn’t had the chance to return to the store yet, and then flung himself down onto his bed. As he lay there, staring up at the ceiling for God knows how long, all he could think was that being kicked out of the talent show wasn’t even the worst part of all of this. There was never a good crowd at those things, and the committee knew nothing about magic, and it wouldn’t affect his future magic career in any way aside from maybe the motivation of spite. So if he tried hard enough, he could spin this whole situation into being a good thing. No, that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was that Tony fucking Wonder saw the whole thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter turned out a fair bit longer than I originally planned because I kept adding scenes. It also ended on a more depressing note than I'd intended. The next chapter will be somewhat more cheerful, I promise.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long! I kept telling myself “ok I’m gonna finish it today” but kept adding new scenes so now it’s about twice as long as I’d originally planned. Unrelated: y’all have seen that behind-the-scenes pic of Tony, right? So glad he’s not buried in cement and is wearing an absolutely iconic jacket.

Michael and Lindsay were a little less sympathetic to Gob’s plight than he would have hoped.  He had kind of forgotten that, in leaving school early, he would be neglecting to give his siblings a ride home.  However, he wasn’t to stay ignorant for long, as the two of them turned up outside his bedroom in full force to remind him.  After listening to their relentless knocking, which was really distracting him from zoning out and staring at the wall, Gob finally unlocked his door to find Michael and Lindsay giving him identical glares.  Sometimes they really were like twins.

“We waited outside the school for you for an _hour_ ,” Michael fumed, dumping his school bag on the floor.

“ _We had to get the bus_ ,” Lindsay said, in a hushed whisper, as if she was worried someone would learn that she’d been on public transport.

“Where were you?” Michael asked.  He folded his arms, which Gob knew was his ‘this had better be good’ pose.

“I was here,” Gob said.

“Doing what?”

Gob shrugged.  “Naming my mice,” he said, gesturing to their box.  “There’s a lot of them, though, so it’s hard to keep track.”

“Oh, that’s great,” Michael said, stepping into Gob’s room and preparing to launch into a lecture.  “You skip school without telling us and you can’t even bother to come up with a good excuse.  You know, you are so selfish-”

“ _You’re_ the selfish one,” Gob interrupted.  “You don’t even care that your own brother was banned from the talent show and humiliated in front of his rival.”

“Yeah, don’t be so selfish, Michael,” Lindsay said, though Gob was pretty sure she wasn’t fully paying attention.

“You got banned from the talent show?” Michael asked, softening his voice a little.  He may not understand Gob’s obsession with magic, but even he was aware of how important performing in the talent show was to him.  “What happened?”

Gob knew Michael’s ‘good brother’ act when he saw it.  He was probably only acting concerned to dispel all claims that he was selfish.  But Gob wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the mouth.  “They said it would be dangerous,” he said, “what with the sword and everything.”

“Well, you did set fire to the curtains that one time,” Michael reasoned, “so you can see why they might-”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Gob announced, dropping defeatedly onto his bed.  “And as if being kicked out wasn’t enough, Tony Wonder saw the whole thing.  Now he’s gonna think he’s the better magician, which is precisely what I was trying to avoid.”

“Right, but does this Tony guy actually care?” Lindsay asked.  “I mean, I’ve never met anybody who cares about the talent show anywhere near as much as you do, so the chances are he doesn’t really care either and it’s not that big of a deal.”

Gob supposed that this was a half-hearted attempt to make him feel better, even though Lindsay knew as well as he did that everything was a competition, whether the competitors knew about it or not.  He was fairly certain that was one of the Bluth family mottos.

“Of course he cares,” Gob said sullenly.  “He’s just as dedicated to keeping an eye on the competition as I am: the only reason he was there in the first place was to see my audition.”

Michael and Lindsay raised their eyebrows at each other.

“Actually, that sounds like he was trying to be supportive,” Michael said.  “Remind me why the two of you are rivals again?”

“Because I was here first!” Gob whined.  “And then Tony comes strutting in, impressing the talent show committee with his illusion, like I’m not supposed to see that as a challenge.  He already knew I was the only magician at this school – if he wanted to be _supportive_ , he would have left things that way.”

“Would having two magicians be such a bad thing, though?” Michael asked.  “I mean, you’re always looking for someone to talk about your magic with, and now you’ve met somebody who cares about it as much as you do.”

“That’s exactly what I said the other day!” Lindsay said, sounding rather proud of herself.  “You should just be friends with this guy.”

The two of them were making an annoying amount of sense, so Gob decided to ignore them.  Even if he did want to be friends with Tony – which he didn’t – he couldn’t even think about facing him after his audition had gone so badly, it would be far too embarrassing.  Rather than considering it any further, he opted instead to go back to complaining.  After he ranted a little more about the talent show committee’s attempts to ruin his magic career, Lindsay offered him one of her pills from Ancient Chinese Secret if it would calm him down/shut him up (he’d already stolen some from her room earlier while he’d been home alone, but she didn’t have to know that) and Michael promised not to tell their parents that Gob and Lindsay were self medicating, under the provision that Gob didn’t abandon them after school again.  Gob thought it was a fair deal.

***

By the time Monday rolled around, and with no small thanks to Lindsay’s pills, Gob had almost recovered from the events of Friday.  The fact that he wouldn’t have to interact with anyone involved in the talent show during his school day was an added comfort, and the main reason he could actually stomach going into school again.  He drove himself and his siblings there on Monday morning, with Michael reminding him that he’d better still be there to take them home at the end of the day.  As soon as they arrived, Michael rushed off before he was seen with Gob, and Lindsay rushed off before she was seen with either of her brothers.  Gob wondered if all families were like this.

Upon entering the school, he quickly sought out his friends.  A group of them were discussing a party that was going to be held at some guy’s house this weekend, news which brightened Gob’s mood considerably.  Gob Bluth was an extrovert with a high alcohol tolerance, and parties were the ideal situations in which to demonstrate these strengths.   While everyone around him was passing out or throwing up, he could go on being the life of the party until the sun came up – it was almost as exhilarating as being on stage.  Plus, he needed a distraction, and an opportunity to get drunk and/or high and/or laid was definitely a distraction.  He got the details from his friends, and assured them that he’d bring all the alcohol he could carry from his house, which resulted in everyone crowding round him to clap him on the back.  That was another good thing about parties: Gob was never more popular than when he was providing free alcohol to the masses.

With these new weekend plans fresh in his mind, Gob’s day actually went by alright – classes were as dull as ever, and he remained unfocused for most of the time, but he did manage to avoid doing anything that would cause a teacher to yell at him.  He had almost gotten through the day without incident, and was walking through the corridor on his way to the exit, when he heard the unmistakeable voice of Tony Wonder calling his name from behind him.  _Shit.  What did he want?  To gloat, probably._   Gob continued to stride ahead without turning back, hoping that if he acted like he couldn’t hear him, Tony would just give up.  As he walked, he kept looking for a way out, but the corridor was pretty full of students moving in both directions, which made a quick escape rather difficult to orchestrate.  He wondered how fast he’d have to walk to avoid Tony without actually running away, but it turned out he wouldn’t get the chance.  Tony’s voice was suddenly coming from right beside him.

“Hey, Gob, I’m glad I caught you.”  Tony was slowing down from a jog as he reached him.  Had he chased him down the corridor or what?  “You left your bag of props on stage on Friday; I’ve been looking after them for you.  I thought you’d probably want a fellow magician keeping an eye on them.”

“Oh.  Right.  Thanks,” Gob said.  He’d completely forgotten he’d left them behind.  It was a good thing Tony had noticed.  Even as he thought that, he could hear Michael’s voice in the back of his head telling him that Tony seemed like he was being supportive.  _Shut up, Michael._   “I guess I rushed off stage pretty quickly,” Gob added offhandedly, as if hoping Tony would have forgotten about the circumstances of his rushing off if he avoided the subject.

 “I’m sorry about what went down,” said Tony, who clearly hadn’t forgotten at all.  “It was totally unfair of them to make you leave like that before you’d even finished performing.”

 _Talk about rubbing it in_ , Gob thought.  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t that bothered about it anyway,” he said in what he hoped was a convincing tone, picking up the pace of his walking again.

 “Still, I would have liked to have seen what I was up against,” Tony said, keeping pace with him.

 _There,_ Gob thought _, I was right all along.  Of course he knows it’s a competition.  And he knows he’s winning.  Look at him, following me down the corridor, reminding me how badly my audition went, as if I don’t already know.  He probably thinks this makes him the better magician, even though anyone can perform a cabinet illusion.  That’s Magician 101.  And, sure, he may have looked cool while doing it, and yeah, he may have stage presence, and he may have really, really great hair.  But none of that matters when – oh, shit, he’s talking again.  Why won’t he just get the message and leave me alone?_  

“Anyway,” Tony was saying, and Gob was already preparing to break into a run.  “If you’re not gonna be performing yourself, I was wondering...  Do you wanna join my act?”

Gob did the opposite of break into a run, and instead halted in the middle of the corridor.  That wasn’t what he had been expecting.  “What?”

“I was actually going to ask you on Friday, before you said you were still planning on auditioning.  I just thought, well: you want to perform in the talent show; I need someone to vanish into a cabinet.”  Tony grinned.  “It’s sort of perfect.”

 “What about your assistant?” Gob asked.  “The girl from your audition?”

“Oh, she’s history,” Tony said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.  “Yeah, turns out she only wanted to be my assistant because she has a crush on me.”

“Oh.  That sucks,” Gob said, though he couldn’t think of anything better than someone having a crush on you _and_ wanting to perform a magic show with you, so he had no idea what Tony’s problem was.  Maybe she hadn’t been that hot.  He tried to cast his mind back and remember what she’d looked like during the audition, but couldn’t picture her.  He guessed he’d just been too focused on Tony to notice.

“That’s why I wanna do it with you,” Tony continued.  “You actually care about the magic.”

Gob narrowed his eyes.  What was Tony’s game here?  Inviting Gob to perform alongside him was hardly rival behaviour.  Unless... Tony was only doing it to humiliate him.  Yes, that made more sense.  If they were going to do this, Tony would be the magician, and Gob would only be his assistant.  Maybe that’s the real reason Tony had gotten rid of his other assistant – because why else would you get rid of a girl who had a crush on you?  Even if you didn’t like her back, you’d at least keep her around for the ego boost.  That’s what Gob did with most of the girls he hung around with.  And most of the girls he hooked up with.  If Tony wasn’t bothered about any of that, then clearly his reasons were more complicated; he must have gotten rid of her just so he could replace her with Gob, and belittle him in the process.  And of course he was assuming that Gob would automatically agree to this: who wouldn’t want to perform with the great Tony Wonder, right?  Smug bastard.  Gob had half a mind to put him in his place and reject the offer up front, but the other half of his mind was already scheming on a way to use this opportunity to his advantage.  And that’s when he came up with a plan.  “Sounds great,” he said enthusiastically, slapping Tony on the shoulder.  He then made a display of checking his watch, and said “listen, I’ve gotta run, can we talk about it tomorrow?”

“Sure – do you wanna meet in the theatre at lunch?” Tony suggested.  “I can give you your props back too.”

“Great, see you then!” Gob called back at him, already rushing off.

True to his word, Gob met Michael and Lindsay outside of his car, only 10 minutes late, which was pretty good for him.

“Kinda thought you weren’t gonna show,” Michael said.

“I got caught up,” Gob said, unlocking the car.

“Doing what?” Michael asked.

“He’s happy, so it can’t be good,” Lindsay commented.

The three of them got into the car, Michael suspiciously asking “what’s got you so cheerful?” as he slipped into the front seat.

Once they were sat down, Gob turned to his brother and grinned.  “I’m back in the talent show.”

“That easy?  What happened to them banning you for life and trying to ruin your career?”

“Oh, I’m still banned.  They don’t know I’m performing.”

Michael raised his eyebrows.  “How’d you manage that?”

“I’m going to be performing with Tony Wonder.”

Now Michael was the one grinning, clearly amused by this change in circumstances.  “So you decided to listen to us after all,” he said.

“Oh, no.  This isn’t friendship, Michael, it’s revenge,” Gob said, starting up the car.  “Don’t you see?  This is the perfect opportunity to sabotage his performance and prove to the committee that I’m the better magician.  And they have no idea I’m going to be there, so nobody will see it coming.”

“Yeah, least of all Tony,” Michael said, reservation creeping back into his voice.  “Sounds like this guy’s trying to help you out, and you’re stabbing him in the back.”

 “He’s not trying to help me; he’s only doing this so he has the upper hand.  Ever since he turned up, he’s been acting like he’s better at magic than me.  First his illusion’s a big success, then he brings up the times my performances went wrong, and _now_ he’s asking me to play second fiddle to him.  Not to mention, he has assistants throwing themselves at him, when I’ve never been able to get one.  Just because he’s hot or whatever.”

Lindsay, who had been sitting silently in the back of the car, suddenly perked up.  “He’s hot?” she asked.

Gob hadn’t realised he’d said that out loud.  “You can’t date him,” he rushed to add, a little more aggressively than intended.

“Why not?”

“Because... he’s my rival,” Gob reasoned.  “You can’t date your brother’s rival.”

“Yeah I can,” Lindsay retorted.

Shit.  She raised a good point.  Gob scrambled for some kind of comeback, and finally settled on “...he’s short.”

“Oh,” Lindsay said.  “Never mind.”

Gob smirked.  He could always count on Lindsay to be shallow – it was actually something they had in common.  Though not in this instance, because Gob actually had legitimate reasons to dislike Tony.  His appearance had nothing to do with it.  His appearance was actually the part that bothered Gob the least.  Not that he _liked_ his appearance.  He just didn’t think about it.  Much.

***

The following day, Gob arrived at school in high spirits.  He was back in the show and planning revenge on his rival, two things which made him feel motivated for the day ahead.  Unfortunately, this motivation did not extend to his class work, but instead manifested itself in the form of restless energy the entire morning.  This did not go down well with Gob’s teachers, who could only politely ask him to sit still so many times before losing their cool.  Fortunately, they did little more than either shout at him, which he was used to, or make him stand outside the classroom, which at least meant he didn’t have to pretend to pay attention.  Considering Gob misbehaved most of the time, it was perhaps surprising that he was never punished more severely – but none of the Bluth siblings had been put in detention in the last two years.  The last time had been when Gob and Michael had ended up fighting in the cafeteria, which resulted in Michael’s spotless, detention-less record being tarnished.  Gob couldn’t even remember what the fight had been about, but he did remember the teacher responsible for placing them in detention receiving a basket of poisoned muffins the next day.  There was no way to confirm whether the two incidents were related, but clearly the school board was wary enough of George Bluth Sr. that they didn’t want to take that risk, and none of the Bluths had faced detention ever since.

After making it through the morning somewhat unscathed, Gob headed straight to the theatre as soon as the lunch bell rang.  He was the first to arrive, and in hindsight he realised he probably should have taken his time and made Tony wait a bit, just to show that he wasn’t a priority or anything.  Now he just looked over-eager to be there, which would definitely give Tony the wrong impression.  He sat down on one of the front row seats, and jiggled his leg impatiently.  After what felt like 20 minutes passed (though it was probably closer to 20 seconds) Gob leapt up from his seat and started agitatedly pacing around the room instead.  Maybe Tony was late on purpose as a power move, which was annoying, because Gob was supposed to be the one delivering the power moves here.  He tried to remember the techniques his father had taught him about how to intimidate the enemy, before it became clear that Michael would be his successor at the Bluth company, at which point he stopped talking to Gob about just about anything.  The one thing George Sr. had always praised Gob for was his ability to be charming, which apparently disguised all manner of failings, whatever that meant.  But, as previously established, Gob’s attempts at being smooth around Tony never seemed to work, so that was useless.  He was considering leaving and then coming back once Tony had arrived, in a last ditch attempt to take the power back, but before he had the chance, the door opened and Tony entered.

“Hey, sorry for keeping you waiting,” Tony said, walking down towards the stage with Gob’s bag of props slung over his shoulder.

“I wasn’t waiting, I just got here,” Gob said quickly.

Tony made that face he often made around Gob, where he seemed amused even though Gob hadn’t said anything funny.  “Here are your props,” he said, handing over the bag.  “That trick sword is awesome, by the way.”

“You looked through my stuff?” Gob asked.

“Yeah – I thought you wouldn’t mind, since we’re both magicians,” Tony shrugged.  “And, y’know, I thought I should check out what you’ve got going on, if we’re gonna be working together.”

“Right, right, yeah,” Gob said, reminding himself that if he was going to go ahead with ruining Tony’s performance, he had to play the part of actually wanting to work with him in the first place.

“So, how does your act work?” Tony asked, taking a seat on the front row.  “You switch out the real sword for the fake one halfway through, right?”

“Yeah,” Gob said, and immediately added “I know how yours works too – panels and stuff,” just so Tony didn’t get too complacent.

“Great, it’s good that we’re on the same page,” Tony said.  He paused for a second and looked at Gob curiously.  “You gonna sit down?”

Gob had remained standing once Tony had sat down in the hope that physically looking down on him would help demonstrate that he was also metaphorically looking down on him, but now he just felt like an idiot.  “Yeah, of course I am,” he said, sitting himself down in the chair next to Tony’s.

 “...Are you alright, man?” Tony asked him, still with that curious look on his face.  “You seem kinda, I don’t know, jumpy.”

“I’m fine,” Gob insisted.

Tony’s eyes flicked up towards the stage, and then back to Gob.  “Was meeting here a bad idea?” he asked, suddenly sounding concerned.  “I know the last time you were here, things didn’t go exactly as planned-”

“It’s not that,” Gob interrupted.  He didn’t know how to say that being back in the theatre didn’t make him nervous, but being around Tony made him nervous, because he wanted to prove himself and he wanted to get revenge, but also because he wanted someone to talk to about magic and he couldn’t stop thinking about all that stupid stuff Michael said, and it was all very confusing and made him feel weird.  But, because he couldn’t say any of that to Tony, he settled on “I’m just excited.  About the magic.”

This response seemed to satisfy Tony, who started smiling.  “Me too.  Like I said before, nobody was into magic at my old school.”

“Why did you switch schools?” Gob asked, part of him wondering if things would have been different if Tony had always been here and they’d both gotten into magic at the same time.  He wondered if they would have been friends.

“We moved here for my parents’ work,” Tony said.  “I’m originally from New York.”  He paused and then admitted   “I feel like I kind of stick out here.”

“Well, I don’t think anyone in California wears all black unless it’s a funeral,” Gob said in agreement.  “And I’ve never seen a guy wear makeup.”

“I only wear that when I’m on stage,” Tony said quickly, as if trying to excuse it, though he didn’t really need to because Gob actually thought it was cool.  “It just looks more dramatic.  And I feel like Robert Smith – you know, from The Cure?”

Gob did not know, and offered up a shrug.

“Oh, man, you have to check them out,” Tony said.  “They’re the reason for, like, 90% of the way I dress.  I don’t wear the lipstick, though.  That’d probably get me beaten up.”

Gob thought that this was probably true. 

“Speaking of which, we should decide how we’re gonna dress for our performance,” Tony was now saying.  “You know, half of a good magic show is presentation.  We need to make sure we look good together.”

“Well, I can probably get some black clothes,” Gob said, and then apprehensively added “not sure about makeup, though”.  He knew he could easily steal some from Lindsay, and he reckoned that if Tony could pull it off, so could he – that wasn’t the problem.  Most of this apprehension came from the fear of his parents somehow hearing about it.  They never took any interest in his magic – or anything else he did – but he was sure that if he so much as picked up an eyeliner pencil, their parent sensors would suddenly start blaring, and that wasn’t a risk he wanted to take.  He wasn’t sure how George and Lucille Bluth would react to a son of theirs wearing makeup (even if it was only stage makeup) but he knew it wouldn’t be positively.

To Gob’s relief, however, Tony didn’t seem to mind.  “That’s cool, it’s not like we both have to dress how I usually do,” he said.  “I’m open to compromise – this is your performance, too.”

“Yeah, but I’m just the assistant,” Gob said, to remind himself as much as Tony, because Tony may be acting all friendly now, and he may be talking like they were equals, but Gob needed to keep in mind that he’d only been asked to join Tony’s performance to act as his subordinate.

“Well, yeah, technically,” Tony replied, “but that doesn’t mean you’re not important.  Without you, I’d just be some guy standing in front of a cabinet.”

Gob wasn’t sure that anybody had ever called him important before.  And while this was probably just another instance of Tony trying to flatter him into forgetting that he really was only an assistant, it still felt kind of nice.  So nice, in fact, that it left Gob with a warm feeling in his chest that wouldn’t go away.  Because when Tony said things like that, it was worryingly easy for Gob to forget that he didn’t actually like him.  And part of him knew that it was dangerous to think this way, because they were rivals, after all, and making friends with your rival was a bad idea, and feeling warm around your rival was probably an even worse idea.  But another part of him liked this feeling, and he didn’t know what to do with that information.

Regardless, the feeling remained as Tony outlined his plans for staging (which were meticulous, but he promised Gob could have some input).  It remained as the two of them planned to meet up next lunchtime and practice performing together.  It remained when Gob joined his friends in the cafeteria for the final ten minutes of lunch, throughout Gob’s afternoon classes, and as he made his way to the car at the end of the day.  Michael and Lindsay were bickering about something or other in the back seat for the whole journey, but Gob wasn’t really paying attention.  He was busy thinking about cabinet illusions, and black clothes, and the way Tony’s face lit up as he talked about magic.  And for the entire drive home, Gob didn’t think about revenge once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a lot of fic exploring Gob’s potential music taste and that’s all excellent and valid but I cannot stop thinking about how much Tony would love The Cure.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Wants to write for a living. Also me: Takes over a month to update a damn fic.  
> Anyway there are parts of this chapter I don't really like but tbh I just wanted to get it out there before 5b comes out (I really cut it close with that one, huh?) so uhhhh if it seems like I didn't proofread it that's because I didn't. Hopefully it won't take quite this long for the next update.  
> In the meantime, I'll be screaming a lot about 5b tomorrow (hopefully good screaming and not disappointed screaming, but that remains to be seen) so if anyone wants to become my screaming buddy then hmu on tumblr @mulderfoxwilliam.

Gob met up with Tony again the next lunchtime, and the next, and the next.  On the surface, the purpose of these meetings was to practice their performance, and they did spend a lot of their time doing that: Tony, it seemed, was somewhat of a perfectionist, meaning they had to run through the performance over and over until every beat was perfect.  Gob was fine with that, as he supposed it meant less chance of anything going wrong, which would make a welcome change.  However, in between all of the practicing, they also spent a lot of time talking.  And Gob was discovering that he enjoyed talking to Tony, perhaps more than he’d ever enjoyed talking to anybody.

They began by just discussing the performance, building on each other’s ideas.  This led to talking about past performances: Tony talked about his attempts at escapology, and Gob detailed his previous talent show illusions, gracefully skirting past the parts where they went wrong.  They talked about their other interests, and how Tony was into theatre, whereas Gob played piano.  They even got onto the topic of families, which Gob routinely tried to avoid discussing with friends, but somehow didn’t mind talking about with Tony.  He learned that Tony had two brothers and three sisters, which seemed like an unreasonable amount to Gob – he’d always thought that Buster was one sibling too many.  Even more surprising was that Tony seemed to actually get on with his siblings, or at least, his father didn’t have hours of collected footage of them fighting each other, which probably meant they got on.  Gob didn’t really have much of a standard to compare his experiences to.  But he told Tony about his family, too: about Michael, Lindsay, even Buster.  And about his parents, although he didn’t share everything about them, because he didn’t need Tony knowing that he was their least favourite child.  And he may have stretched the truth a little when he talked about how he was going to take over the family business one day, but Tony already knew he was the eldest, and admitting that Michael was the clear successor despite being younger was a social faux pas that even Gob knew better than to make.  It did, however, clash somewhat with his claims that he was planning on becoming a famous magician.  He quickly pointed out that he could do both (and silently wondered if he could work that into some kind of gimmick).  Tony said he was glad, because Gob had way too much charisma to waste it by just being a businessman at a real estate firm, which made Gob smile.  And something else Gob was discovering was that when he smiled at Tony, Tony smiled back.  This was revolutionary to him.  People didn’t really smile at Gob.  They glared at him or rolled their eyes at him, they shouted at him or laughed at him, but they didn’t smile at him.  But Tony did, and that almost made up for all the other stuff.

Friday’s practice was the most successful yet.  The two of them were completely in sync now, and in Gob’s not so humble opinion, they had way more on-stage chemistry than Tony had had with his previous assistant.  Maybe Tony was right, maybe the fact that Gob actually cared about the magic was the deciding factor in making a good performance.  It also helped that Gob was warming up more and more to not actually sabotaging the show after all.  When they’d first started practicing, Gob had been focusing on figuring out the most effective method of ruining the illusion.  This meant his mind was wandering, and he occasionally missed his cues – and he didn’t need Tony thinking that he was a bad performer, so he decided to set aside his plans for sabotage until he’d perfected the performance.  But the harder he worked at practicing, and the better the two of them got at being on stage together, the more he started wondering whether it would be worth ruining all of this.  Maybe, if it went well, then that would actually work to his advantage: it would show that he _could_ perform without making some catastrophic mistake, and prove the talent show committee wrong for banning him in the first place.  Plus, it turned out that it was fun performing with Tony, and spending the entire time planning on stabbing him in the back would kind of put a damper on that.

Their final run-through went off without a hitch, and they each took it in turns to bow while the other imitated a cheering crowd.  Gob knew that the students watching the talent show were never that invested and at most would probably just give polite applause, but he didn’t want to kill Tony’s enthusiasm, because it was nice to see someone acting just as excitable as him.  Maybe one day they’d perform the illusion together in front of a crowd who would actually appreciate their talents.

“That went great,” Tony grinned, slapping Gob on the shoulder.

Gob always welcomed any physical displays of affection, but he had to say, he thought theatre types like Tony were more into hugging than shoulder slapping.  They always seemed to be giving each other hugs and gratuitous cheek kisses whenever they were celebrating something.  He wondered if Tony wasn’t into all that, or whether he was purposefully keeping his distance a little because Gob wasn’t part of the whole theatre thing.  He should probably let Tony know that even though he was really cool and popular, he still appreciated a good hug from time to time.  Just in case Tony wanted to hug him.

But before he could say anything, Tony was talking again.  “Hey, we should sort out costumes, so we can do a dress rehearsal.  Do you know what you’re going to be wearing yet?”

“Uhh, I haven’t really thought about it,” Gob lied.  He had actually searched through his closet for something to wear, but he was worried that if he turned up in one of his more showy patterned shirts, Tony would think it was garish, and not in a good way.  Which is how he found himself asking: “hey, why don’t you come over after school?  We can go through my closet, try and piece something together.”

“Okay, sure,” Tony said, sounding a little surprised at the suggestion.

“I can drive us,” Gob said excitedly.  Ever since Tony had offhandedly mentioned that he thought it was cool that Gob could drive (he said he’d never taken the time to learn when he lived in New York) Gob had been looking for an excuse to give Tony a ride somewhere, just so Tony would think he was even cooler.  Unfortunately, this plan did have some drawbacks.  “I need to drive my brother and sister home too.  They’re kind of the worst, but they’re alright.”

“That’s cool, I actually kind of want to meet them,” Tony said.

“What?  Why?” Gob asked, aghast at the thought.

“I don’t know, I’m just curious,” Tony shrugged.  “Your family sounds so different from mine.”

Tony was right there.  Hopefully, Gob would be able to get himself and Tony safely in and out of his room before his parents made an appearance, so Tony wouldn’t get a chance to see how different Gob’s family really was.  There’d be no way of getting around him meeting Michael and Lindsay, though, which presented its own set of problems.  Up until now, Gob hadn’t really considered the ramifications of Tony meeting his siblings.  The first potential issue was that they knew about his plans for revenge, but the second, more pressing issue, was that they didn’t exactly think that Gob was particularly impressive, and the last thing he needed was Tony agreeing with them.  All it would take was a disparaging comment by Michael or an offhanded insult by Lindsay, and Tony would realise that not only did the talent show committee not particularly care for Gob, but that the same could be said for his family.  And then Tony might start to question his allegiances, and that would not be good.  If Gob wanted to perform in the talent show, he needed Tony to like him.  But there was no way he was going to avoid this meeting taking place, so he’d just have to cross that bridge when he got to it.

Gob and Tony agreed to meet outside Gob’s locker at the end of the day, and with that, they rushed off to their afternoon classes before they were much later – as per usual, practice had run over the end of lunchtime.  Time always seemed to get away with them somehow, and while lunch had never felt long enough to Gob in the first place, now it seemed even shorter.  He’d been expecting to have time at the end of each practice session to go back to the cafeteria and see his friends, but he and Tony always ended up getting carried away.  What was weird about it was that Gob found that he didn’t really miss the company of his friends.  It had been almost a week now, and he had barely spared a thought for any of them.  They hadn’t seemed to notice he wasn’t around as much either, but even that didn’t sting as much as it probably ought to.  Anyway, he decided, he would have plenty of opportunity to re-establish himself at the party that weekend, which had crept up surprisingly quickly.  Throughout the week, he had been approached by various people (mostly his friends, though some of them he was sure he’d never spoken a word to in his life) who had requests for what alcohol he should bring.  He was fairly certain that half of these people had fake IDs and could easily buy their own alcohol, but he supposed that asking him was the cheaper option.  Besides, it felt nice to be needed.

***

As soon as his final class finished, Gob rushed to his locker to ensure that he wouldn’t miss Tony.  After a few minutes of waiting, several of his friends appeared at their surrounding lockers, and they greeted him.  “Hey, Bluth – you still coming to the party?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Gob said.

“Good, I’m counting on you for that tequila.”

The guys then started talking about all the girls that were going to be at the party, which caused Gob to realise that he had been focusing so much of his energy on practicing for the talent show that he’d barely spared a thought for which girl he should plan to hook up with.  He usually extended a personal invite to at least one girl so he knew he’d have a sure thing, but that opportunity had kind of slipped him by.  He supposed he could just decide at the time based on whoever seemed the most up for it – or, simpler yet, not hook up with any girls and just lie about it later.  That had served him well enough in the past.  When the guys asked if he was bringing a date, he quickly made up the excuse “nah, I’m keeping my options open,” which seemed like a respectable enough response.

“Same here,” one of his friends said in agreement, and then after a beat, asked “hey, is your sister coming?”

The question made Gob immediately square up.  If he knew anything about his sister, then she almost definitely would be coming: in true Bluth tradition, any party involving alcohol was not to be missed, unless you were Michael and boring.  Unfortunately, Lindsay had a reputation for being just as easy as Gob, which meant that Gob would have to spend at least some of his time at the party warding off his more lecherous friends – not that Lindsay ever appreciated his efforts.  “I don’t know,” he said tersely, “but you’d better keep away from her.”

“Whatever you say,” his friend responded, holding up his hands in mock surrender as he and the others made to leave.  He didn’t seem remotely concerned by Gob’s threatening tone, and as Gob watched his friends leave the building, he couldn’t help but feel like nobody ever took him seriously.

Sighing, he leaned back against his locker.  He felt like he’d been standing there a while by now, and the crowds in the corridor had very much started to thin, but Tony still hadn’t made an appearance.  He wasn’t blowing him off, was he?  Just as Gob was becoming concerned, he saw Tony enter the corridor, wave in greeting, and make his way over.  Gob walked to meet him halfway.

“Sorry I’m late,” Tony said, “I got caught up talking to a friend.”

“It’s fine,” Gob said, and then remembered how his siblings tended to react whenever he was late in taking them home, and added “not sure Michael and Lindsay are gonna be pleased, though.”

“Shit,” Tony muttered.

“It’s alright, who cares what they think?” Gob said breezily, as the two set off walking towards the parking lot.

“Well, I don’t want to make a bad impression on your family,” Tony said.

Gob didn’t bother commenting that he was more worried about his family making a bad impression on Tony, mostly because he was so taken aback by the fact that _Tony_ cared about making a good impression.  His other friends had never been so concerned about impressing his family when they’d trashed his house during parties, or hit on his sister.  But then, Tony was different to all his other friends.  He couldn’t imagine Tony trashing a house, and he certainly couldn’t imagine him hitting on Lindsay.  Or, at least, didn’t want to imagine it.  For a start, she was taller than him.  And she totally wasn’t Tony’s type.  Not that he knew Tony’s type, because he never talked about girls, aside from that one time he’d said his old assistant had had a crush on him.  Gob had noticed said assistant a couple of days later in the cafeteria, and upon inspection she was actually pretty hot, so clearly Tony had really high standards – too high to be interested in Lindsay, anyway.

As they headed towards the car, he could see Michael and Lindsay already standing there.  They were both leaning against the car, which Gob always told them not to do, but he knew it wouldn’t be worth getting mad at them for it: Michael’s arms were folded, which meant he was agitated at Gob’s lateness, and the last thing Gob needed was to agitate him further.  He watched as Lindsay noticed him, and then nudged and muttered something to Michael.  The two of them turned to stare at Gob and Tony as they walked over, which Gob took to mean they were surprised he was walking with something they hadn’t seen before.  Gob was, after all, extremely popular, and most of his friends were well known throughout the school.  Plus, he hadn’t really advertised to his siblings how much time he’d been spending with Tony recently.  Sure, they knew he was going to be performing with him, but he hadn’t told them about all their lunchtime meet ups, or how easy Tony was to talk to about anything and everything, and how they actually had a lot in common, really, because he knew Michael and Lindsay would just say “I told you so”, and he wasn’t ready for that kind of smugness.  He was just gonna play it cool, he decided, as he and Tony reached the car.

“This is Tony,” Gob announced, as soon as Michael and Lindsay were in earshot.  “Tony Wonder.”  He looked at the two of them pointedly, as if to say _don’t blow this for me,_ and continued “he’s coming over to prepare for the talent show.”

Michael straightened himself up, clearly realising he was going to have to be polite if Gob had company.  “Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking Tony’s hand.

Lindsay, for her part, managed nothing more than a disinterested “hi”, probably because Tony was indeed shorter than her.

“Tony’s sitting in the front,” Gob announced as he unlocked the car.

The ride home was sufficiently uncomfortable.  Every time Michael or Lindsay looked like they were about to speak, Gob immediately spoke up at a much higher volume, just in case they were going to say something embarrassing.  This got slightly more awkward when Tony started to try and make conversation – he asked Michael about his interest in theatre (which Gob thought was a really generous description of Michael’s stint as Peter Pan) but before Michael could so much as open his mouth, Gob loudly started talking about the first thing that came to his mind.  He managed to take the topic of bees surprisingly far, so much so that by the time he’d stopped talking, Tony seemed to have forgotten he’d ever asked Michael anything.  Oddly enough, Gob didn’t actually remember telling Tony about the Peter Pan thing in the first place, but he supposed it probably was the exact kind of embarrassing thing he’d tell someone about Michael.

As soon as they arrived home, Gob rushed Tony out of the car and into the house as quickly as possible, so they didn’t need to spend any more time than necessary with Michael and Lindsay, who were happily lagging behind.  Thankfully, Gob’s parents weren’t home yet, although the maid was (“you have a _maid_?” Tony asked incredulously, to which Gob shrugged and asked “doesn’t everyone?”) but at least this meant he wouldn’t have to smuggle Tony into his room like he was hiding a fugitive.  Instead, he opted to give a brief house tour, as usually when the Bluths had guests over that they wanted to impress, showing off the house was a sure-fire way to achieve it.

“This place is huge,” Tony said, taking in the sights as Gob led him around.  “You could fit, like, two of my houses in here.”

“You think this is cool, wait until you see my bedroom,” Gob said.  This was something he said a lot when trying to impress people, though in fairness, it was usually in the context of these people being girls he was trying to sleep with.  Which obviously wasn’t the case here.  So he quickly clarified “you know, because that’s where my closet is.  And that’s why you’re here.  To go through my closet with me.”

“Right,” Tony said.  “Lead the way.”

Gob set off upstairs with Tony following behind.  They soon reached his room, and Gob opened the door and gestured for Tony to step inside.

“Pretty big too, right?” Gob grinned, as he followed Tony in and shut the door behind them.  He could boast the largest room out of any of the Bluth siblings, probably because he had so much stuff, and his parents had repeatedly commented on how they didn’t need his magic junk cluttering up the rest of the house.  But if that meant they gave him the biggest bedroom, then who was he to complain?

“Ehh, about the same size as my room,” Tony said.  “Of course, I share that room with my brother, so...”

“You share a room?” Gob asked, horrified at the very idea of having to share a room with Michael or, God forbid, Buster.  “What do you do about having girls over?”

Tony suddenly looked away.  “I, uh, don’t have girls over,” he said.

Weird.  Did he just mean he went to their place instead, or what?  Surely if that was all he meant, he wouldn’t be looking away so uncomfortably.  Was he a virgin or something?  Almost as soon as that thought entered Gob’s head, he dismissed it – Tony was way too good looking to not have ever gotten laid before.  He must have meant something else.

While Gob was considering all of this, Tony had made his way over to the side of the room, and was looking at one feature of it curiously.  “What’s in the box?” he asked.

Gob supposed this was a deliberate change of subject on Tony’s part, but he was happy to entertain it.  “Oh, mice.”

“Mice?”

Gob walked over, opened the box, and let Tony peer in.  “Mice.  I was gonna use them for my act, but that didn’t work out, so now I’m just keeping them around until they come in useful.”

“When’s a box of mice going to come in useful?” Tony asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Gob began offhandedly, before reaching behind Tony’s head and pulling a mouse out from behind his ear.  “You might be surprised.”

When Gob had tested that one out on his family, responses had ranged from disinterest to mild disgust, but Tony was grinning widely.  “That was great,” he said, seeming genuinely impressed.  “You’re really good at sleight of hand.”

The compliment made Gob’s face heat up a little, so he quickly turned away in case he was noticeably blushing, and put the mouse back in the box.  Maybe it’s because he wasn’t used to people showing interest in his magic, but he always felt kind of flustered whenever Tony praised him for it.  He was aware that he was the one now avoiding eye contact, so decided he’d better get them back on track.  “Anyway,” he announced, “closet’s over here.”

Gob tried not to feel too self conscious as he sat on the edge of his bed and watched Tony rifle through his clothes.  Occasionally, Tony would pull out a shirt and lay it on the bed next to where Gob was sitting, which he took as a good sign.  When there were 5 shirts laying there, Tony turned around and inspected them all.  “I like these ones,” he said, “and I have similar ones myself, so we can coordinate.”

There was a white one, a black one with grey detail, two shades of red, and a purple one.  All of Gob’s patterned shirts remained in the wardrobe, presumably because Tony didn’t own anything like that, which came as no surprise to Gob.

“We should go for the black, right?” Gob asked, motioning to that shirt.  “Since that’s your whole thing.”

Tony seemed unsure.  “Yeah, but I said before that I didn’t want it to all be about me.  You wear a lot of colour, we should probably pick a vibrant one.”  He seemed to muse over it for a while, and then decided “I like the purple one.”

“Same,” Gob said immediately.  He’d always thought that purple was a very magician-y colour.  “And you have a purple one too?”

“Well, mine’s closer to pink than purple, but they’ll still go together,” Tony said.  “Hey, do you have a white jacket?  Then I can wear black and you can wear white, that’ll be cool.”

“There should be a white dinner jacket in there,” Gob said, getting up to look in his closet himself.  He didn’t get much use out of that jacket aside from the rare occasions where the entire family attended his mother’s club, and it had been a while since he’d been, so the jacket was buried pretty far back.  “Here,” he announced, retrieving it and passing it to Tony.

Tony held it up next to the purple shirt, and then inspected what Gob was currently wearing.  “These should both go fine with the white jeans you’re wearing,” he concluded.

“Great,” Gob said.  And then he began to take his shirt off.

Tony’s eyes widened.  “What are you doing?”

“Trying them on, obviously,” Gob said, pulling his t-shirt over his head, dropping it on the floor, and then reaching for the purple shirt Tony was holding.  “Gotta make sure it looks good.”

Tony, meanwhile, appeared to be having trouble deciding where to look.  His gaze was alternating between the floor and the ceiling, occasionally glancing at Gob and then quickly looking away again, as if he’d never seen a guy take his shirt off before.  It was kind of similar to how he acted when Gob talked about having girls over, avoiding eye contact and everything, so Gob wondered if Tony was just a prude.  He’d known plenty of Catholic girls who were like that, so maybe it was the same for Jewish guys.

Gob buttoned the purple shirt most of the way up, and then took the jacket from Tony, who was finally able to look at him again, though he still looked a little disoriented.  Slipping the jacket on, Gob took a couple of steps back to give Tony a better view of the outfit, and asked “how do I look?”

Tony gave him a quick once over.  “Uh... you missed a couple of buttons there,” he pointed out.

Gob looked down at himself.  “Yeah, thought I’d leave the top ones open.  You know, for sex appeal.”

“Right,” Tony chuckled.  He looked at Gob a little longer, and then smiled.  “Well, in that case, yeah.  You look good.”

Now that Tony was looking at him properly, Gob felt the atmosphere in the room suddenly shift.  Make no mistake, Gob Bluth liked being looked at and liked being admired, and he was no stranger to it, but coming from Tony, it felt different.  And he didn’t know why, but in that moment, Gob wondered if he should invite him to the party.  Given the crowd that Tony hung around with, and the fact that he was nowhere near as popular as Gob, it was pretty unlikely he was invited.  Plus, if Gob had missed the opportunity to invite a girl, he may as well ask Tony instead, right?  Not for the same purposes, obviously.  Just to have him there, because he made Gob feel good.  Even standing here with Tony in his room, just looking at each other, made Gob feel good.  Kind of warm.  Really warm, actually.  “Is it hot in here?” Gob asked, shifting a little uncomfortably.

“You are wearing a jacket,” Tony pointed out.

“Right,” Gob said, swiftly removing it.  Tony was still looking at him.  He didn’t feel any cooler.  “I should probably take the shirt off too, before I sweat right through it,” he said, only half joking – had somebody turned the heating up or what?  He made to pull the shirt off over his head so he didn’t have to waste time unbuttoning it, but clearly he hadn’t left quite enough of the top buttons undone, which is how he found himself in the somewhat compromising position of having the shirt caught over his face.  “Shit.  Hang on.”  Rather than taking the more sensible course of action of pulling the shirt back down and unbuttoning it, he proceeded to try and yank it over his head, with minimal results.

“Stop, let me help you before you rip it,” Tony said, reaching up to try and help with the buttons.  Gob couldn’t see him, but he could feel him standing closer, and this only made him feel warmer.  He wanted to make some kind of joke about how he usually liked to have a couple of drinks before letting anyone undress him, but his mouth was suddenly very dry.

Just then, Gob’s door swung open and Lindsay appeared in the doorway.  “Gob, have you seen my-” she began.  She then paused, took one look at her brother with his shirt caught over his head, and his friend who currently resembled a deer caught in headlights, said “never mind”, and closed the door behind her.

“Sisters,” Gob muttered, as he finally managed to remove the shirt, revealing a very embarrassed looking Tony standing in front of him.

“I guess your family doesn’t knock?” Tony asked, flushing bright red, as though he’d been the one caught with his shirt off.

“It’s fine, she’s caught me in worse situations,” Gob said lightly, in an attempt to diffuse the tension he’d been feeling ever since Tony stepped closer to him.  He picked up his discarded t-shirt from the ground and pulled it on, while Tony put his shirt and jacket back in the closet for him without saying a word.

Gob felt like he should say something else to fill this sudden uncomfortable silence, but the moment had kind of passed to invite Tony to the party now.  Besides, now that he thought about it, he wasn’t entirely sure it was such a good idea.  He was there to hang out with his other friends and probably get laid, and having Tony there would get in the way of that, since Tony wouldn’t know anyone else and would have to spend the entire night with him.  Gob couldn’t constrain himself like that – he needed to make the rounds, ensure that everyone knew he was there and that he’d brought loads of free alcohol.  He had to make a name for himself somehow.  So, at a loss for what else to say, he settled on “do you want me to drive you home?”

“Oh,” Tony said.  “Uh, sure.”

He sounded kind of surprised that Gob was cutting things so short, and, frankly, Gob was kind of surprised at himself too.  He’d been so excited about having Tony over earlier, though he wasn’t sure _why_ he’d been so excited about it.  Maybe that was why he now wanted Tony to leave, so he could be alone for a while and think about why he was feeling all of these feelings around him all of the time.  “It’s just...  It’s getting kinda late,” Gob said, which it wasn’t.  “And my parents will be home soon, and you definitely don’t wanna meet them.”  That part was closer to the truth.

“Yeah, I get that impression,” Tony said.

Gob opened his bedroom door, and Tony followed him out into the hallway.  There, they could see Michael and Lindsay standing in the doorway of Michael’s bedroom together, talking in low voices.  As soon as Michael noticed Gob, he hit Lindsay on the arm and the two of them turned to stare at Gob and Tony with wide smiles.  “Hey, guys,” Michael said, in an incredibly forced tone.

Gob wondered what they’d been talking about so quietly, but it wasn’t exactly the right time to ask them about it.  “I’m gonna drive Tony home,” he announced.

“So soon?” asked Lindsay.

What did she care?  She’d barely acknowledged him when Gob introduced them earlier.  “Yeah, so if mom comes back while I’m gone, don’t mention Tony or anything, she’ll only start asking questions,” Gob said.  He didn’t need his mother interrogating him about having a friend over she hadn’t heard of, especially a magician friend, when her thoughts on that aspect of Gob’s life were pretty clear.  She’d only go on a tangent about how magic wasn’t ever going to get him anywhere, and he really couldn’t face anything like that right now, not when he had other things to think about.

“Don’t worry, we won’t tell her _anything_ ,” Lindsay said, still with that wide smile.

Gob’s eyes flicked between the twins.  Why were they being so weird?  Had they stolen some of his weed or something?  “Alright.  Well, we’re going now,” he said, and motioned for Tony to follow him.

“Bye, guys,” Tony said, a little awkwardly, as they headed down the stairs.

“Nice to meet you!” Michael shouted after them, a few seconds too late to sound natural.

What the hell was all that about?

***

The car ride to Tony’s house was a lot better than the ride home from school had been.  Gob didn’t have to focus on making sure Michael and Lindsay didn’t say anything to embarrass him, so instead he turned up the radio and sang along to the music.  Even better, Tony joined in with him.  Things were starting to feel normal again – they’d gotten kind of weird in Gob’s bedroom, and weirder still when they ran into his siblings in the hallway, but this...  This was great.  This was what he liked about hanging out with Tony.  They were on the same wavelength.

Gob almost missed the turn off to Tony’s street when the two of them got so into belting the chorus of a song that Tony waited until the very last second to tell him when to turn – Gob made a quick recovery and basically swerved into the street, at which Tony laughed and asked if he’d ever considered a career as a getaway driver.

“Maybe if being a magician doesn’t work out,” Gob joked, because of course being a magician was going to work out.

“And your family’s business,” Tony added.

“Yeah, that too,” Gob said.  He’d forgotten he’d told Tony he’d be in charge of that one day.

“Anyway, thanks for the ride,” Tony said, unbuckling his seat belt.  “This was fun.”

Gob didn’t know if Tony was referring to the car ride or the outfit selection, but he said “same – I mean, I had fun too,” because it was true, because he always had fun with Tony, and he wondered exactly when he’d stopped considering Tony a rival and started to think of him as his best friend.

“Guess I’ll see you at school,” Tony said, as he opened the car door and got out, turning back to add “bring your clothes on Monday, we can do that dress rehearsal.”

“Right,” Gob said, thinking about how Monday was three days away but the party was tomorrow, about how maybe it would be good to have Tony there after all, and how all he had to do was open his mouth and invite him before he walked away.  “I’ll see you then.”

Tony smiled, and waved, and then he was gone – and Gob knew that he was the one who’d decided to drive him home so soon, but he couldn’t help but feel kind of disappointed to see him go.  That was something else he needed to take some time to think about.  How he always seemed to miss Tony when he wasn’t around, but then kept foregoing opportunities to actually spend time with him.  Practicing during lunchtime was one thing, but why did having him over at his house or inviting him to a party seem to have this added pressure to it?  Gob was never nervous around people in that way.  That was Michael’s thing.  God, was he turning into Michael?  He shuddered at the thought as he started up his car.  However, the more he thought about it as he drove home, he realised that thankfully wasn't the case: Michael was only really like that around girls, and Tony wasn’t a girl.

So it had to be something else.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter absolutely kicked me in the arse. Picture someone sticking some sheets of paper to a frisbee and then throwing it over the edge of a cliff. That’s how I feel, realising this chapter. Anyway I love the Bluth siblings.

What felt like the next morning but was probably in actuality the next afternoon, Gob rolled out of bed and into the kitchen to find Lindsay sitting at the table staring at a bowl of cereal.  Gob knew it was a bad sign if even Lindsay was awake and eating breakfast before he was, but it wasn’t exactly his fault that he’d woken up so late when he’d been awake for most of the night.

After getting in from driving Tony home yesterday, he’d barely had a moment to himself.  In the time it had taken him to leave and come back, his mother had arrived back from the club and was insisting that the entire family get dressed to go out to dinner.  While Gob had missed half of the exposition, Lindsay and Michael soon filled him in: apparently there were rumours flying around the club that their father was having an affair, and so their mother wanted to take the entire family out in public to maintain the illusion of them being a functional family unit with no affairs in sight.  Neither Lindsay nor Michael sounded particularly surprised by any of this, since it was hardly the first time something like this had happened, and once they’d caught Gob up, they each resigned themselves to their separate rooms to get ready.  Gob was still curious as to what he’d seen the two of them whispering about earlier when Tony was over, but now didn’t seem the right time to ask when they all had bigger fish to fry: namely, preparing to spend the evening in the company of their parents, in the knowledge that their father was almost definitely having an affair and their mother knew all about it.

Gob sighed as he went through his closet for the second time that afternoon, this time under less enjoyable circumstances.  On the surface, he didn’t mind getting dressed up and taken out to a fancy dinner, but family tension was a terrible first course, and he couldn’t help but feel frustrated that all of this was disrupting his afternoon plans of contemplating his friendship with Tony.  He had a lot of weird and complicated emotions to work through, and the last thing he needed right now was to be surrounded by a family that was unfamiliar with any emotion other than disdain.  If only his father had timed this affair more conveniently.  He chose to pass over his white dinner jacket– after all, he didn’t want to spill something on it when he had dress rehearsals coming up – and selected a more conventional white shirt and black jacket.  As he got dressed, he concluded that at least he’d have some time to himself before his father got home from work, time to think things through...

And then Gob heard his father arriving home early, which set off a whole other chain of events.  The Bluth parents were hardly the most restrained of people, and it wasn’t long until their arguing could be heard throughout the house.  Gob wouldn’t be surprised if his mother had called his father and insisted he come home early just so they’d have more time to get the arguing out of the way before going out and acting like everything was fine.  Of course, this meant that Gob was about to have even less time alone than he’d originally hoped.  The downside of Gob’s room being the largest was that it was automatically where his siblings gathered when arguments of this scale took place.  As if on cue, Michel and Lindsay soon entered wordlessly, Buster trailing close behind them, clinging to Michael’s jacket sleeve with one hand.  Michael didn’t seem especially pleased about this, but accepted it nonetheless.  They assumed their usual positions, with Gob at the head of his bed, Lindsay sitting at the foot of it, Michael on the desk chair across from them, and Buster perfectly content to sit on the floor.  For a while they sat in silence, which Lindsay eventually broke.

“I don’t know how we’re supposed to go out and pretend everything’s okay,” she announced.

“Come on, it’s not like this is the first time this has happened,” Michael said, his words not masking how uncomfortable he looked as the shouting only got louder.

“And it always turns out fine,” Gob added.  This was mostly true: their father would buy their mother some expensive jewellery and all would be forgotten until the next indiscretion.  Theirs may not be the most functional family, but at least there were some traditions you could count on.

Lindsay folded her arms.  “This must be seriously messing us up,” she muttered.

Neither Gob nor Michael offered up a rebuttal this time.

Lindsay took their silence as an opportunity to go on some kind of rant about their father not respecting women, but Gob wasn’t really paying attention.  He was busy thinking about how it was a good thing he’d gotten Tony out of here before all of this went down.  He had told Tony some things about his family, but mostly just about how rich and successful they were, and this would be a shock to anyone’s system.  Maybe, subconsciously, this is why he’d felt weird about having Tony over earlier – because when he hung out with Tony at lunchtime, that was in its own little bubble.  As soon as Tony was over at his house, that bubble was broken, because the Bluth household didn’t mean magic, it meant gathering with your siblings in one room while your parents argued in another.  And part of him wanted to be able to have Tony there, because he liked him and wanted to be able to spend time with him, but another part of him wanted to keep Tony separate from all of that.  Of course, none of this explained why he couldn’t ask Tony to the party, or why he was always feeling warm around him, or why he kept thinking about ways to make him smile, but that was a different matter.

The argument went on for a record amount of time, during which Gob distracted Buster with a couple of mouse tricks, at which Buster seemed delighted.  At least he was good for something.  Even Michael looked mildly entertained, and while Lindsay wasn’t exactly enthralled, she also wasn’t going on an animal rights tangent, so Gob took that as a win.  At long last, the shouting died down, and soon their mother was calling them all from the lounge.  They trudged out one after the other to find both of their parents standing there in their nicest outfits, and Gob had to admire their ability to get dressed as they argued.  Once their mother had assessed that they were all dressed suitably, they were ushered to the car: and if Gob had thought the ride home from school with Tony, Michael and Lindsay had been uncomfortable, then the ride to dinner with his family was on a whole other level.  Nobody was speaking, which at least meant his parents weren’t arguing, but they weren’t trying to keep up appearances yet either, so there was an uncomfortable tension in the air which was threatening to snap at any moment.  Gob tried to break the silence a couple of times with some lighthearted comments, but nobody responded, and eventually Michael just shook his head as if to say that it wasn’t worth it.

The atmosphere changed slightly once they got to the restaurant, but not necessarily for the better.  Upon entering, Lucille subtly pointed out several of her associates, who were the apparent heads of the rumour mill at the club.  Apparently, these were the people this entire charade was for – it’s a good thing Gob Bluth was an expert at putting on a show.  When they were seated within earshot of some of these tables, Gob loudly addressed his parents so that everyone would know they were there.  At first, Lucille looked exasperated at the volume at which Gob was speaking, but once she noticed one of her acquaintances glancing over, she quickly threw back her head and acted as if she was laughing at something her husband said.  Once she’d ascertained that they’d seen her, she looked briefly at Gob with something resembling approval, before turning back to George Sr. so quickly that Gob wasn’t sure whether he’d imagined her looking at him like that.

The evening went by in much the same fashion as these first few minutes.  Their parents were holding hands and forcing smiles the entire time, as if they hadn’t been yelling in each other’s faces an hour earlier.  Michael was attempting to smile, too, but it was coming across as more of a grimace, whereas Lindsay had given up her fake smiling immediately after her mother advised that she skip the appetisers.  That was the first comment made about Lindsay’s weight that evening, but it certainly wasn’t the last.  Clearly Lucille had to take out her frustrations somehow, and Gob was just glad it wasn’t on him for once.  Of course, even that brief solace didn’t last long – Michael mentioned some test he had coming up next week, to which his father responded that he’d better do well, so at least he’d have one son who wasn’t a total disappointment.  Lucille insisted that Buster wasn’t a disappointment.  Michael winced.  Gob downed his soda, wishing it was vodka.

After a meal (which Lindsay barely touched) and several rounds of drinks (only the parents were having alcohol, but Gob helped himself to their drinks when they went to the bathroom) the Bluth family finally set off home.  Cue yet another uncomfortable car ride, now with the added exhaustion all of the family members were feeling from the effort of pretending to be happy all evening.  It had been a painfully long day, so Gob wasn’t surprised when, as soon as they arrived home, Lindsay went straight to her room without so much as a “good night”, and Michael murmured something about needing to study.  Once Buster was put to bed and their parents went into their room to resume their arguing, this left Gob alone.  Which is, of course, what he’d wanted earlier, but now he wouldn’t mind some company.  He wasn’t really in the mood to think about Tony any more.

Instead, as he lay in bed trying to will himself to sleep, he was thinking about his family.  About his parents, who made it pretty clear they hated him 99% of the time.  Lindsay, who would say things to their father that Gob would have gotten a slap for, and yet still somehow managed to be his favourite child.  Buster, who was the only one their mother showed any genuine affection towards, although Gob wasn’t sure that was necessarily a good thing.  Even perfect Michael, who wore a suit a size too big for him to dinner and looked more like a child dressed up as a businessman than anything else, who would try and keep the peace but never quite succeed.  Gob hated them all and loved them all, was jealous of each of them and didn’t envy them one bit.  He wondered if they all felt the same way about him, but thought it was probably unlikely that they had anywhere near as many feelings.  Either way, it was these feelings that kept him up for most of the night.

And by the look of it, Lindsay had slept almost as badly as he had.  Gob passed her on his way to the fridge, and she looked downright miserable.   _That makes two of us_ , he thought.  “Where’s Michael?” he asked, retrieving a carton of orange juice which he proceeded to drink straight out of.

“At the banana stand,” Lindsay said.  “At least he has an excuse to get away from this place.”

Gob knew that the only thing stopping himself and Lindsay from also working at the banana stand was the fact that neither of them wanted to, but he didn’t bother pointing this out, since he was pretty sure Lindsay already knew this too.  “Wanna go get a frozen banana?” he suggested.

“I’m not hungry,” Lindsay said, swirling her spoon around in her half-full cereal bowl.

Gob went to the banana stand anyway, mostly to pester Michael.  And for once, Michael didn’t seem all that annoyed to see him.  “How’s Lindsay?” he asked, preparing Gob his usual order.

“Not hungry,” Gob said.

“Mom really went overboard last night,” Michael said, with more anger in his voice than Gob was used to hearing from him.  “She always has to take things out on one of us.  It’s not Lindsay’s fault if Dad can’t keep it in his pants.”

All of this was true, though Gob couldn’t help but wish Michael got that angry when Gob was the one being berated.  Their parents had hardly been kind to him last night either, but Michael had barely batted an eyelid when that happened.

“At least she’s got that party tonight,” Michael continued, “that’ll take her mind off things.”

“She’s coming to that?” Gob asked, and then he narrowed his eyes.  “Wait, you’re not coming too, are you?  I’ve got a reputation to uphold, I can’t be babysitting both of you all night.”

“I’m not coming, I’ve got that test to study for,” Michael said, as he handed Gob his banana.  “And even if I was coming, I wouldn’t need you hovering over me – I’ve got friends I could hang out with, you know.”

“Sure,” Gob scoffed, “says the guy who’d rather study than go to a party.”

“It’s for my business class, it’s important,” Michael said.  “Dad will never let me run the company if I don’t pass with flying colours.”

“You’ll be fine, you always pass tests,” Gob said disinterestedly, before taking out half of his banana in one bite.

“That’s because I _study_ ,” Michael said, wrinkling his nose as Gob tried to vocalise some kind of retort with a mouth full of banana.  He took advantage of Gob’s momentary inability to respond by saying “hey, do me a favour: don’t be an asshole to Lindsay tonight, alright?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Gob asked, once he was able to speak again.

“It means don’t be an asshole.  Don’t insult her, don’t laugh at her, don’t complain about having to babysit her, any of that.”

“Why do you just _assume_ I’m going to be an asshole to her?” Gob asked, affronted.  “That’s very judgemental, Michael.  Maybe _you_ shouldn’t be an asshole to _me_ for once.”

Michael looked at him blankly.  “I just gave you a free banana and then stood here and watched you deep throat it.  I think you owe me one.”

Gob had no idea what Michael was getting at with the deep throat comment, but pointedly shoved the remaining half of the banana into his mouth just to spite him.

Michael groaned and turned away.  “Look, just do this for me, alright?” he asked.

Gob rolled his eyes.  Michael was always determined to insert himself into everybody else’s problems – now, if Gob decided to be nice to Lindsay, Michael would be able to take all the credit for it, just like he always did.

Still, when Gob returned home to find that Lindsay had left her breakfast unfinished and shut herself in her room, he decided that maybe Michael did have a point.  He stopped outside of her door on the way to his own room and called “Linds, do you want a ride to the party tonight?”

For a moment, there was no response, and Gob was about to give up on this whole _not being an asshole_ business, when she called back “yeah, thanks”.

Gob smiled smugly as he headed to his room.  There was his good deed for the day.

***

One of the upsides of giving Lindsay a ride to the party was that Gob had some help getting all the alcohol into the car.  One of the downsides was that he had to sit and wait around for her to get ready.  He had no idea how she took so long to get dressed, especially since she’d skipped dinner, which should have given her even more time.  But Gob had been ready for nearly an hour now, and she was still keeping him waiting.  And Gob had thought _he’d_ taken a while, though that was mostly due to him being indecisive over which shirt to wear.  He’d decided to choose from the selection Tony had said he liked the day before (not the purple one, though, he was saving that for the dress rehearsal).  After trying on each of the remaining shirts, he finally settled on the black one – he hadn’t worn it much before, but he decided better late than never.  Besides Tony always looked so cool in black clothes, maybe he was onto something.  And if Gob was going to get laid tonight, he needed to be working at his full potential, since he still didn’t know which girl to target, which set him a few steps behind the other guys.  While he waited for Lindsay, he ran through a mental list of which girls were going to be there, and how viable they were as options: _already slept with her, already slept with her, wouldn’t sleep with her if you paid me..._ Damn, he was really running out of girls.  He was lounging on the couch trying to decide if any of them were worth sleeping with a second time, when Lindsay finally came down the stairs in the tightest dress she owned.  Clearly Gob wasn’t the only one looking to get laid tonight.  Usually he would have made some comment about how she could at least pretend like she wasn’t going to be the easiest girl at the party, but he remembered Michael’s instruction about being nice to her, so said “nice dress” instead.

 “Thanks,” she smiled, seemingly genuinely complimented.  “Nice shirt,” she added as an afterthought.

“Tony picked it,” Gob announced proudly.

Lindsay raised her eyebrows.  “Tony’s here?” she asked, looking up the stairs as if expecting him to suddenly emerge from Gob’s room.

“No, he’s not coming to the party,” Gob clarified.  “I mean he picked it out yesterday when we were sorting out costumes for the talent show.”

“Oh, _that’s_ what you were doing,” Lindsay said.

“Yeah, what did you think we were doing?”

Lindsay didn’t respond.  However, once they were in the car and en route to the party, she brought up the topic again.  “So you guys are pretty close now, right?” she asked casually.  “If he’s picking out your clothes and everything.”

Gob had been waiting for this – the smugness from his siblings who had been saying all along that he and Tony should just be friends.  “Look, before you say _I told you so_ -” he began.

“I wasn’t gonna say that,” Lindsay interrupted, “I’m not Michael.”

“Okay, well,” Gob continued, “before Michael says _I told you so_ , you can tell him that this is strictly a business relationship.  Two magicians working together for a spectacular illusion, that’s all.”  That wasn’t all, but he wasn’t ready to admit to Lindsay just how much he liked spending time with Tony after he’d spent so long railing against him.

“Right,” Lindsay said, sounding unconvinced.  “I’m sure all business relationships involve helping each other out of shirts...  Although, that does describe dad’s relationship with all of his secretaries pretty well.”

That was a solid burn, which Gob acknowledged with a laugh, before adding “well, Tony’s not my secretary.”

“Actually, in this scenario, you’d be the secretary,” Lindsay said.

Gob frowned.  “Tony and I are equals,” he finally responded.

“So have you taken his shirt off?”

Gob spent the rest of the car ride informing Lindsay of how she was getting far too hung up on the shirt thing, and how it was a simple wardrobe malfunction which could occur between any two business associates.  By the time they arrived at the house where the party was taking place, he was pretty sure he’d managed to adequately explain himself.

They had mutually agreed to enter the party separately for the sake of both their reputations, so Lindsay got out while Gob parked the car, and then Gob sat and waited for about five minutes before he headed in himself with as much alcohol as he could carry.  He had to make several trips to and from the car to get it all in – he wouldn’t have minded Lindsay’s help in carrying it, but didn’t want her getting any of the credit for bringing it.  Besides, she was already occupied making short work of one of the bottles of wine he’d brought.  Once he’d finished carting the rest in, he poured himself a drink and then went to seek out his friends, many of whom had already helped themselves to the alcohol.  They greeted him enthusiastically, applauding him for bringing the drinks, and dragging them into their circle.  He joined in on their conversation, though he had to admit he was having a little trouble keeping up: he had been somewhat out of the loop for the past few days, having been spending his lunchtimes practicing for the talent show, so he wasn’t 100% up to date with their goings on.  One of them was angry with some other guy over something, that much was clear.  It was either over a girl or a sports game, or possibly both.  He was hoping somebody would stop and explain, but nobody seemed to realise that he didn’t already know – he wondered if any of them had actually noticed he’d been missing for most of the week.

After a while, he slunk away to get himself a second drink.  His plans to reintegrate himself into the group weren’t entirely working.  He’d gained some points with the alcohol, but lost some by not knowing what the hell any of them were talking about.  Not only that, but he found that he wasn’t really all that interested in whatever drama had occurred in his absence.  While, normally, this kind of feud would have excited him, he concluded that there were things he’d rather spend his time discussing.  Like sleight of hand tricks, and mice, and which shirts he looked good in.  Which reminded him, he’d selected tonight’s Tony-approved shirt with the express intention of looking good, so he should stop concentrating on his friends and start focusing his energy on his other plan for the night – finding a girl he hadn’t slept with yet, and sleeping with her.  He was over by the side of the room, pouring vodka into his cup and casing the room for potential girls, when he noticed the front door open and someone enter the house.  He looked idly over to check if it was anyone noteworthy, and almost did a double take.  Shit.  Who had invited Tony, and why hadn’t it been him? 

For a moment, he debated whether or not hiding behind the table of alcohol in the hope that Tony wouldn’t notice him would be weird.  On the one hand, he’d expressly decided against inviting Tony to the party because it would interfere with his plans for the evening, so avoiding him for the duration of the night would be the most sensible course of action.  On the other hand, his first plan hadn’t gone too well regardless, and he had plenty of time to conduct his second plan, so he might as well just go over to him and say hi.  Hang out with him for a while.  After losing interest in whatever his friends had been talking about, he was pretty attracted to the idea of spending time with someone who actually talked about interesting things.  Not for the whole night, because eventually he’d find some girl to pretend to care about talking to, but until then.  Of course, the one snag in this plan was that clearly somebody else had invited Tony to the party, and he might not even want to hang out with Gob if he was here to meet someone else.  Gob wondered who it could have been, since none of Tony’s usual crowd was here, but he didn’t have to wonder for long.  His eyes had been following Tony making his way through the lounge, and he couldn’t help but be surprised at where they had landed.  Tony had halted at the other side of the room, and was now talking to Sally Sitwell, of all people.  Gob didn’t even know they knew each other.  The Bluths, on the other hand, were very familiar with her.  She clearly had a thing for Michael (God knows why), she had an ongoing rivalry with Lindsay, and her family was their family’s competition – all three of which were excellent reasons for Gob to try and sleep with her, which he had attempted plenty of times in the past, to no avail.  He wasn’t especially disappointed by this, since he didn’t like her all that much in the first place, so if anything then her rejection was kind of a freebie.  But she had always been thoroughly unimpressed with his magic, so why she was suddenly acting all cosy with Tony was a mystery.  Whatever the reason, Gob didn’t like how these two previously separate worlds were now colliding.

Noticing Sally look up, Gob turned away abruptly before he was caught staring at them, and bumped into some girl who had been standing behind him.  “Sorry,” he said distractedly.

“That’s okay,” she smiled.

Gob looked at her a moment.  He didn’t think he’d seen her before, and he normally knew every girl at these parties, especially the hot ones – and she was pretty hot.  “Do I know you?” he asked.

“I don’t think so.  I’m Marta,” she replied.

“Marta...” Gob mused slowly.  Yeah, she could work.  “Could you move over here for me?” Gob asked, putting his hands on her shoulders and manoeuvring her to the other side of him.  He positioned her in such a way so that he could talk to her while being able to look over her shoulder at Tony and Sally, just to keep an eye on what was going on over there without being too obvious.  “Perfect,” Gob said.  Marta was looking at him confusedly throughout this whole affair, and he didn’t know what explanation to give her, so he quickly distracted her by getting her a drink from the table behind him, which she gladly accepted.

“So, are you here with anyone?” Gob asked, in an attempt to ascertain whether she was single.

“Just a friend, but then she left me to go off with some guy,” Marta replied.

“Well, her loss is my gain,” Gob said, in the most charming tone he could muster, before glancing over towards Tony and Sally again.  The two of them were still talking, leaning in pretty close to each other, which Gob hoped was just because they were trying to be heard over the music.  It was pretty loud.  He decided to use this as an excuse to get closer to Marta, and to be fair, she seemed pretty into it.  The two of them flirted for a while, during which Gob learned that the reason he didn’t recognise her was because she didn’t go to his school, and her friend had dragged her to the party purely so they could meet new guys.  This was great news for Gob, firstly because it had allowed him to meet a hot girl he hadn’t slept with yet, and secondly because he wouldn’t have to face her at school on Monday when he inevitably didn’t call her after tonight.  They continued to talk for what Gob considered to be an unreasonable amount of time, though he supposed it was worth it if it eventually got him laid.  Every so often, though, Gob would zone out of whatever she was saying and let his eyes wander back over to Tony and Sally.  He noticed that Sally said something which made Tony laugh, so he took it upon himself to say something to make Marta laugh.  After all, he was funny too.  Way funnier than Sally Sitwell.

By now, Gob was pretty sure he’d put the hours in and was ready to move onto the next level, so he waited until Marta finished whatever she was saying, and he leaned in to kiss her.  She kissed him back, which was fortunate, because this meant he hadn’t blown it by not paying attention to her talking.  He wished he’d had a chance to drink more beforehand; kissing always felt better when he was drunk, and he wasn’t even tipsy.  But it was fine.  She was fine.  The only issue was that he could no longer see what was going on with Tony and Sally.  He hoped _they_ weren’t kissing.  They had looked pretty friendly over there, and if Tony was involved with Sally, that _had_ to impact his friendship with Gob: the Bluths and the Sitwells were rivals, after all, and Tony would have to choose a side.  Surely he’d choose Gob – they had a magic act to perform together, and Gob knew Tony well enough to know that he wouldn’t let some girl interfere with that.  Of course, it wasn’t that long until the talent show, and who knew what would happen after that?  Gob had been expecting that they’d just go on performing magic together, but Tony might drop Gob like a hot potato if he had a girlfriend to be his assistant.  Thinking about all of this was really ruining Gob’s mood, and kissing Marta was becoming less enjoyable by the second.  He decided to tear himself away just so he could ascertain what was going on with Tony and Sally, and if everything was fine, then he would be able to focus again.  He quickly pulled back from Marta and looked over her shoulder once more.  To his surprise, Tony wasn’t even there anymore, and Sally was standing alone.  Gob cursed himself for getting distracted and quickly surveyed the room, but Tony was nowhere to be seen.  Dammit.  How was he supposed to keep tabs on what was going on with the two of them if he couldn’t even keep track of one of them?  He decided he had to take a more direct approach.  “Could you excuse me for just one minute?” Gob asked, and without waiting for Marta to respond, he made a beeline for Sally.

“Gob,” Sally greeted as he came to a halt in front of her.  She sounded like she’d been expecting him.

Gob decided to forego casual small talk and get straight to the point.  “Are you dating Tony Wonder?” he asked, his voice sounding more accusatory than planned.

“What?” Sally laughed.  “No, obviously not.”

“Well, it’s not that obvious, you were all over him just now,” Gob said indignantly, crossing his arms.

Sally looked at Gob as if she couldn’t quite tell whether he was being serious, before finally realising that he was, at which point she took pity on him.  “Gob, Tony’s gay,” she said.

“What?”  This changed things.  Gob wasn’t entirely sure what it changed, but it was certainly something.  It made Gob feel weird – and Gob felt weird a lot, especially lately, but this was different.  And he didn’t know why he felt this way, because he had nothing against gay people, really, so this news shouldn’t be affecting him so much, but he suddenly felt like his heart was going to beat out of his chest.

Sally shrugged.  “It’s not exactly a secret.  Anyway, he’s pretty popular with the theatre kids, and I need their vote for Prom Queen, so I’m just making a tactical friend.”  She switched on a smile and asked “I’ve got your vote, right?”

“Yeah, sure – where’s Tony?” Gob asked, suddenly feeling a desperate need to speak to him.

“I don’t know, probably hiding somewhere.  This totally isn’t his scene, he’s only here because I told him-” she stopped short, as if realising she’d said too much, though it was far more likely she’d said exactly as much as she intended to say.

“Told him what?” Gob asked.

“Never mind,” Sally said, and then she turned and walked off towards a crowd of friends.

Gob would have followed her to interrogate her further, but his priority right now was to find Tony, so he set off on a search.  Unfortunately, this was easier said than done.  The house was pretty crowded, and he’d never been there before, so he didn’t exactly know his way around.  He made his way through the entire house as quickly and thoroughly as possible, checking every room except the locked bathrooms, but it was all in vain.  Either Tony had vanished into thin air (he was pretty good at appearing out of nowhere, especially if puffs of smoke were involved, so the reverse was certainly possible too) or he’d left almost as soon as he’d arrived.  This made some sense – Sally Sitwell would be enough to put Gob off staying at a party too – but it was still kind of weird that he’d bother to come all the way here and then leave almost immediately.

Giving up, he headed back to the lounge.  Marta was still standing there, alone, so at least he still had a chance with her.  He headed back over to her, offering up a “sorry about that” which he hoped covered his sudden disappearance.

“Where did you go?” she asked.

“Oh, I was just looking for a friend,” Gob said, trying to sound nonchalant.  “Guess he’s already left.”

“So you won’t be running off again?”

Gob gave her his most charming smile.  “I’m all yours.”

Just as he was about to lean in to resume their earlier kissing, he spotted Tony across the room, heading pointedly towards the front door.

“Tony!” he exclaimed, practically pushing Marta aside as he ran to catch him.

“Oh, hey Gob,” Tony said, not sounding especially surprised to run into him.  He certainly wasn’t matching Gob’s excited tone, so Gob tried to tone it down a little.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” he said casually, as if he hadn’t just conducted a thorough search of the house in an attempt to find him.

Tony gave a shrug.  “Just thought I’d check it out – I’m probably gonna go now, though,” he said, motioning towards the door.

Dammit.  The last thing Gob needed was for Tony to leave right now.  “Can we talk?” he asked, trying not to sound too desperate.

“Sure,” Tony said.

“Let’s go somewhere quiet,” Gob said, setting off upstairs, giving Tony no choice but to bemusedly follow him to the first empty room he found, which was someone’s bedroom.  It didn’t have a lock on the door, which was irritating, but at least afforded them some privacy to carry out this very important conversation.  Once they were both inside, Gob spun around to face Tony.  “Sally Sitwell just told me you’re gay,” he announced.

“...oh,” Tony said.  He faltered for a second, and then said “well, yeah.  I am.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Gob asked.  “Did you think I’d be homophobic or something?  Because I’m not.  I think it’s great – leaves more girls for me, am I right?”  He laughed a little too loudly to mask how weird he was feeling about the whole situation, and hoped Tony wouldn’t pick up on his discomfort.

Tony sat down on the edge of the bed.  “I guess I didn’t know how you’d react.  I knew most of my theatre friends wouldn’t care, but the crowd you hang around with can be a lot more...  I don’t know, I wasn’t sure _what_ you’d think.”  He paused for a moment, and then cautiously added “and then, for a while, I thought _you_ might be.  Gay, I mean.”

“Why would you think that?” Gob asked, taken aback.

“Well, you know, you can be kind of flamboyant sometimes.”

“So – so – just because I’m flamboyant, that automatically means I’m gay?  That’s very homophobic, Tony,” Gob spluttered.

Tony laughed.  “Alright, I’m sorry for being homophobic,” he said.  “Although seeing as I’m the gay one here, I think I should get a free pass.”

“Right, yeah,” Gob nodded, sitting next to Tony on the edge of the bed as he tried to process this.  The gay one.  Tony was _gay_.  Now that Gob thought about it, it did explain a lot.

“Anyway, don’t worry, I know you’re straight now,” Tony continued.  “I mean, I saw you making out with that girl, so that kinda confirmed it.”

 “I’ve been with tons of other girls, too,” Gob rushed to say, just to emphasise exactly how straight he was in case Tony had any more doubts.  “And not just making out.  I’ve had sex loads of times.  With loads of girls.  You know how it is.  Well, I guess you don’t.  But, yeah, that’s me, having sex with girls left and right.  I was totally gonna sleep with that girl earlier, too-”

“Alright, alright, I get it,” Tony interrupted, his voice sounding a little strained.  “You have lots of sex with lots of girls, congratulations.”  He actually seemed kind of annoyed at what Gob was saying, which was weird.  Maybe he was just jealous because he wasn’t getting any.  Well, Gob _assumed_ he wasn’t getting any because he was pretty sure that there were no other gay guys at the school, but what did he know?  Tony hung around with all those theatre kids, after all, and while Gob didn’t know much about theatre, he knew it was pretty gay.  Maybe Tony was dating some smug theatre student, and they kissed and held hands and talked about The Magic Show together.  Gob didn’t like the thought of that at all.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked, before he could stop himself.

“Heh, no,” Tony said, looking down at his lap.

Gob immediately felt relieved, though he didn’t know why he cared so much whether or not Tony was dating anybody.  He supposed he liked being the person Tony was closest to.  At least, he’d thought of himself as the person Tony was closest to, but now he was finding out that Tony was gay and everyone seemed to know except him.  Even _Sally Sitwell_ knew Tony better than he did.  For the first time, Gob was starting to understand Lindsay’s rivalry with her.  “You know,” he found himself saying, “Sally’s only friends with you to get votes for Prom Queen.”

Tony seemed a little confused by this change of subject, but went with it anyway.  “Yeah, I know,” he said, “but I’m only fiends with her so she’ll give me information, so it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement, really.”

Gob was kind of lost on the second half of that sentence, but he understood the first half well enough.  “What kind of information?” he asked.

“Oh, she just tells me things about people when I ask her, nothing big.  Just since I’m new here, and she knows everything about everyone – it’s pretty impressive, actually.”

“Did she say anything about me?” Gob asked.  That was all she needed, Tony’s opinion of him being tainted by Sally Sitwell.

“Yeah, I asked her about you after we first met,” Tony said, as if this was no big deal.  “I was already thinking about changing my assistant, so I wanted to know how serious you were about the whole magic thing.  I didn’t expect her to know you so well, but I guess your families know each other.  Anyway, she told me you’d been obsessed with magic for years.  I could tell she thought that was weird, which I guess is why I could never be proper friends with her.  She doesn’t get it, you know?”

“Yeah, totally,” Gob nodded, relieved that not only had Sally not said anything inflammatory, but that Tony wasn’t actually that close with her after all.  “And that’s all she said?”

“Well, she told me some stuff about Michael and Lindsay, too.  Mostly Michael.”

“Yeah, she totally has this crush on him, it’s super weird,” Gob said.  “I mean, why would you pick Michael when I’m right here?”

“Oh, do you have a thing for her?” Tony asked, furrowing his brow, since Gob hadn’t seemed all that fond of her beforehand.

Gob laughed.  “Oh, no, I’m just saying – I’m hotter than Michael, right?”

Tony responded to the question by chuckling awkwardly, and Gob frowned.  That sounded like avoidance to him.  What, did Tony not think he was hot?  That seemed unfair: he thought Tony was hot, and he wasn’t even gay.  It was a purely objective statement.  He didn’t need to be gay to notice that Tony’s hair looked especially nice tonight, or that he was wearing a little bit of eyeliner despite claiming he only wore it on stage but that didn’t matter because it looked really good.  Gob considered telling Tony this in the hopes of him responding in kind, but realised that telling his male friend how hot he was probably wasn’t the best way of proving his heterosexuality.

“What are you thinking about?” Tony asked, interrupting Gob’s thoughts.

Gob wondered how long he’d been sitting there in silence for Tony to ask that question, and decided he’d better come up with a lie about his thought process rather than admit that he’d just been contemplating Tony’s appearance the entire time.  “Just that we should probably get back to the party...” Gob said, which wasn’t entirely false, as it had occurred to him that they really ought to get out of the bedroom before it reached the point in the night where people would be wanting to use it.

“I guess you wanna get back to that girl, huh?” Tony asked.

“Oh, yeah, her.”  Gob had forgotten about her.  She was probably still downstairs waiting for him.

Tony stood up from the bed.  “You have a good night then, Gob.”

“You’re leaving?” Gob asked, quickly standing too.  “‘Cause, you know, I don’t have to fuck that girl, we can just keep hanging out instead.  She wasn’t even that hot anyway.”  He was rapidly forgetting what she looked like.  What was her name again, Martha or something?

“Nah, it’s cool, I don’t wanna interrupt your night.  I wasn’t gonna stay anyway, this isn’t really my scene.”

“That’s what Sally said.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, she said you were only here because...  Well, she didn’t actually finish that sentence, so I don’t know what she was gonna say.”

 “Oh.”  Tony looked uncomfortable.  “Well, I guess I thought this guy I liked was gonna be here.  But he didn’t show.”

“What guy?” Gob asked suspiciously.

“You don’t know him,” Tony said hurriedly.

Gob was about to ask some follow-up questions to try and determine who this mystery guy was (and subsequently determine whether he’d be any threat to Gob’s friendship with Tony) when someone burst into the room.

“Gob, there you are.”  It was one of Gob’s friends, and it sounded like he’d been looking for him – maybe their group had noticed his absence after all.  Gob felt kind of pleased about this, but not for long.  “Is that your sister in the lounge?” his friend continued.

“Maybe – what’s going on?” Gob asked.

“I think she’s had too much to drink.”

“I doubt it: she’s barely been eating, let alone drinking,” Gob said.

But his friend looked sceptical, so Gob followed him down to the lounge with Tony close behind.  Sure enough, Lindsay was sitting on the floor slouched against the back of the couch, barely able to sit up straight.  Gob was genuinely surprised to see her in that condition.  They hadn’t even been here all that long; she shouldn’t have been approaching anywhere near that state.  He wasn’t sure quite what to do, but he noticed people around were looking at her as if she was a ticking time bomb, so he knew he had to do something.

“Do you want me to help you get her home?” Tony offered.

At first, Gob almost laughed.  Bluths didn’t leave parties early, they stayed until the bitter end, and the idea of going home before it even hit midnight was absolutely ridiculous to him.  But, looking at Lindsay, he decided that maybe he’d have to make an exception.  “Yeah,” he said, and he and Tony made their way over to her.

“Come on, Linds,” Gob announced, standing over her with his hands on his hips.  “Get up.”

Lindsay made no move to get up, nor give any indication that she’d even heard him, so Gob had to take matters into his own hands.  He crouched down and tried to lift her up, but this wound up being more difficult than he’d anticipated, since she seemed to be almost wilfully staying put.  Gob didn’t want to admit to a room full of people staring at him that he couldn’t even pick up his little sister, but he clearly wasn’t getting anywhere with it.  Thankfully, Tony decided to step in before Gob had to actually ask for his help.

“Here,” he said, crouching down on Lindsay’s other side.  “I’ll take the left; you take the right.  Balance things out.”  Together, after a little struggling, the two of them managed to get her to a fairly upright position.  “Can you walk?” Tony asked her.  She didn’t respond, lolling her head on Gob’s shoulder.

“I’m guessing not,” Gob replied.

Thus began an agonisingly slow journey to the front door, with Gob and Tony essentially dragging Lindsay along with them.  With half of the party-goers subtly watching them struggle towards the door, and the other half not-so-subtly watching, Gob couldn’t help but feel that this was not going to help enhance the Bluth family reputation.  Maybe he’d be able to spin it into being a positive thing for him – Selfless Brother Leaves Party Early To Take Care Of Sister Because He’s Such A Great Guy – but it didn’t look so good for Lindsay, and that was just in regards to what people at school would think.  Gob could picture their parents’ reactions now, and they were even less pleasant.  Their mother would be mad at Lindsay for making an embarrassment of herself in front of everybody.  Their father would be mad at Gob, and blame him for not keeping an eye on her.  On the bright side, maybe Gob could drag Michael down with him – after all, he was the one who’d said that Gob didn’t need to babysit his younger siblings, and look where that school of thought had gotten them.  As they finally made it out of the house and into the night, Gob couldn’t help but think that maybe Michael had had the right idea avoiding the party tonight, if this was how things were ending up.

“She must have had tons, she never gets this bad,” Gob marvelled, as they staggered towards the car.  He was actually fairly certain he’d never seen _anyone_ in his family get so drunk in such a short space of time: alcohol tolerance was the one thing they all had in common.

“You did say she hasn’t been eating,” Tony pointed out.

Gob blinked.  “Does that affect it?”

Tony looked at him in disbelief.  “I worry about you, Gob,” he said.

Thankfully, the car was parked close by, and it didn’t take them long to reach it.  Gob let go of Lindsay for a moment to fish his keys out of his pocket.

“Are you sure about this?” Tony asked, glancing between Gob and the car.  “Maybe we should call a cab...”

“It’s fine, I’ve barely had anything to drink,” Gob insisted, which for once was the truth.

Tony didn’t look like he entirely believed him, but apparently trusted him enough to get in the car anyway.  He sat in the back seat with Lindsay so that he could keep an eye on her while Gob drove.  She was resting her head on his shoulder, which definitely would have annoyed Gob previously, but knowing Tony was gay immediately dispelled any concerns he might have had about the situation.

Once they arrived home, Gob and Tony resumed their earlier positions either side of Lindsay and helped her from the car into the house.  Gob had thought they were being fairly quiet, all things considered, but apparently this was not the case, as Michael soon came downstairs in a huff – though his mood soon evaporated when he saw the state that Lindsay was in.  He helped Gob get her to the couch, while Tony went through to the kitchen to get her some water.

“What happened?” Michael asked.

“I don’t know, she just got really drunk,” Gob said.  “She hasn’t eaten anything, Tony said that might have something to do with it.”

“She hasn’t eaten _all day_?” Michael asked.  Gob realised that since he’d been working at the banana stand all day, he’d missed out on the fact that Lindsay had been skipping meals.

“Well, she had a bowl of cereal this morning, but she barely touched it,” Gob said.

Michael looked furious.  At first, Gob wasn’t sure if he was mad at him or at Lindsay, but then Michael said “this is all mom’s fault”, and that was a sentiment Gob was prepared to get behind.  “All that stuff she said last night.  And Lindsay isn’t even fat, she’s just always been big for her age, that’s all.”  This was true, but wasn’t exactly revelatory.  Gob had never believed that Lindsay was fat, and he wasn’t even sure that their mother believed it.  It was just one of those things she said because she enjoyed getting under Lindsay’s skin; it didn’t mean it was true.  But, as Gob could attest, it also didn’t mean that it wasn’t tough to hear.

Michael was still muttering about their mother under his breath, but stopped when Tony reappeared with a glass of water, taking it from him and holding it up to Lindsay’s mouth.  Thankfully, Lindsay was functioning enough to start taking sips.  Gob and Tony stood back and watched for a moment, before Tony suggested “we should get her something to eat, soak up the alcohol.”

The two of them escaped to the kitchen, Gob feeling somewhat relieved to get away.  He directed Tony to the bread, and Tony proceeded to make some toast, saying that it wasn’t much, but it was quick and easy and would at least put something on her stomach.  Gob nodded along, wishing he could be more useful, but not really knowing how he could be.  At least Tony seemed to know what to do, and Gob thanked God he’d been there at the party, even if it had only been because of some guy.  Speaking of which, Gob was still curious as to who this mystery guy was that Tony was into, but now was hardly the right time to ask about it.  Maybe he’d try grilling Tony on Monday.  After all, if Tony was going to end up dating someone, it was only right that this guy be properly vetted by Tony’s best friend first.  Gob ran through a mental list of qualifications.  He’d have to like magic enough to be able to appreciate Tony’s brilliance, but not so much that he could replace Gob as part of the act.  He’d have to be funny, because Tony deserved someone who could make him laugh, but not too funny, because Gob liked making Tony laugh and didn’t need some boyfriend stealing his thunder.  And he’d definitely have to be good looking, because if Tony didn’t think Gob was hot then his standards had better be damn high.  And if he passed all of these tests, then maybe Gob would be okay with the guy.

“Gob, you okay?” Tony asked, and Gob realised he’d been fully zoned out thinking about this.

“What?  Yeah, fine,” Gob said, blinking as he refocused on Tony, who was holding out a plate of toast.

“Do you want to take this through to your sister?” Tony suggested, handing the plate over.

Gob headed back to the lounge, where Michael had succeeded in having Lindsay drink the full glass of water.  Gob passed him the toast – Lindsay, who was slightly more aware of her surroundings by now, murmured some protests that Gob couldn’t fully make out, to which Michael responded with a vehement “screw what mom says” and insisted that she eat.  After a while, he finally managed to coax her into eating.  Gob hovered above them throughout all of this, aware that he wasn’t being particularly helpful, but not knowing how else to contribute.

“Hey, I’m gonna go now, if that’s alright,” Tony said, hovering a few feet behind the Bluth siblings, clearly feeling like he was intruding.

“Do you want me to drive you home?” Gob asked immediately, finally seeing a way to be useful.

“Are you sure?” Tony asked, looking back over at Lindsay.  “I don’t mind getting a cab if you wanna stay.”

Gob didn’t really want to stay.  Now that Michael had taken over the Lindsay situation, he couldn’t help but feel like a third wheel.  He turned back to Michael just in case he had any protests, but Michael just nodded and said “you go, I can make sure she’s alright”.

“Come on,” Gob said, and he led Tony back outside to his car.

Gob didn’t need directions to Tony’s house this time, so they mostly sat in silence as they drove.  The radio was playing some old song Gob didn’t recognise, but it was slow and kind of calming after the events of the night.  He listened through to the end and felt himself relax, and once the song was over and the radio host started talking, he turned the volume down and looked over at Tony.

“Thanks for helping with Lindsay and everything,” he said.  “You were really great.”

“Yeah, well, my brother’s an alcoholic, so,” Tony shrugged.  “Nothing I’m not used to.”

“Oh,” Gob said.  He’d kind of thought that problems like that were limited to his family.  He wondered why Tony had never mentioned this before, and then realised that maybe he wasn’t the only one who had to conceal parts of his life from other people.  He also realised he’d been silent in the wake of Tony saying this, and he didn’t want Tony to think he was weirded out about it – after all, he understood that sort of problem pretty well.  So, as a display of solidarity, he announced: “my mother’s an alcoholic.”  It felt weird saying that out loud.  It wasn’t the sort of thing the Bluths told other people, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of thing Gob said when he was trying to seem cool in front of someone.  But coming clean about it actually felt kind of good, so much so that suddenly the floodgates opened, and Gob was telling Tony everything.  “And she hates me.  My dad kinda hates me too.  So do Michael and Lindsay, but they hate mom and dad more.  And I’m not taking over the company, Michael is.”

“I know,” Tony said.  “I mean, about the company, not the other stuff.”

“How do you know?” Gob asked, pretty sure he hadn’t let any of this slip before now.

“Sally told me.  Well, she told me that she’ll be taking over her dad’s company, and Michael will be taking over your dad’s, so I kinda worked it out for myself.  And then she was talking about how they might do a merger once they’re in charge, I don’t know, I kind of lost interest at that point.”

Gob stared at Tony incredulously.  “So you don’t mind that I lied to you?” he asked, surprised that Tony was taking this so much in his stride.

“Eh, it’s cool.  It’s not like you lied about anything important,” Tony said.

Gob smiled, feeling more comforted than he had in a long time.  Tony didn’t care that Gob had lied to him.  Tony didn’t care that he wasn’t taking over the business, or that his family was so messed up, or that his parents hated him.  And, right now, Gob didn’t care about these things either – all he cared about was the fact that Tony liked him anyway.

“Eyes on the road,” Tony said, nudging Gob, who realised he’d been looking at Tony for perhaps longer than someone in control of a car should.  He swiftly turned his attention back to driving, and focused on this until he found himself pulling up outside of Tony’s house.

“I’ll see you on Monday, then,” Tony said, unbuckling his seatbelt.

“Right,” Gob said.  “Dress rehearsal.”

“Looking forward to it,” Tony grinned.  He climbed out of the car, and was about to shut the door behind him when he paused and turned back to Gob.  “By the way, I don’t think Michael and Lindsay hate you,” he said.  “And if they do, they’ve got really bad taste.”

Gob didn’t know how to respond, so he just nodded and smiled and hoped that covered it.

“Night, Gob.”

“...Night,” Gob responded, once Tony had left.

***

Gob arrived back home to find Michael sitting alone on the couch.

“Where’s Lindsay?” Gob asked.

“In bed,” Michael said, standing up and walking to meet Gob.  “I got her to eat and then took her upstairs, hopefully she’ll be alright.”

“What are you still doing up?” Gob asked.

“Waiting for you to get back,” Michael said.  “Wanted to check you were alright.”

“Of course I’m alright,” Gob said.

Michael nodded.  “Thanks for helping Lindsay home tonight,” he said, and he seemed genuinely grateful.

This was not an emotion Gob was used to having directed towards him, so tried to shrug it off as casually as possible.  “Well, you said to be nice to her,” he said.

“We’ve got to stick together, all of us.”  Michael said this about once a month, usually after some big fight had taken place.  And he always placed his hand on Gob’s arm when he said it, which was a Michael version of a hug, so it felt meaningful.  The sentiment never really lasted, and they were back at each others’ throats soon enough, but it was a nice idea.  Gob let himself bask in it for a moment.  “Right, I’m gonna get to bed,” Michael soon added, clearly feeling that this was enough brotherly affection for one day.

“Yeah, me too,” Gob said, and the two of them headed upstairs together in companionable silence.

Once they reached their respective bedroom doors, Michael paused before opening his to turn and look over at Gob.  “Tony seems nice,” he commented nonchalantly. 

Tony _was_ nice.  Nicer than Gob could ever have expected him to be.  “Yeah, he’s – I mean, he’s–”  Gob didn’t know why he found himself stuttering over his response, but Michael somehow seemed to understand better than he did.

“It’s okay, Gob,” he said gently.

Gob didn’t know what Michael meant by that. 

But as he bid Michael goodnight, he couldn’t help but think that maybe Tony was right.  Maybe his siblings didn’t hate him, at least not all of the time.  And for the times that they did hate him, at least he’d be able to count on Tony to like him instead.  And that was a nice thought to drift off to sleep to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope Marta Estrella is having a nice day.


End file.
